Justice Jay Sengupta of Calcutta High Court on Tuesday ordered city police commissioner Vineet Goyal to monitor the probe into the death of a Class X student who fell from the fourth-floor balcony of his school building in Kasba on September 3.
Sk Shan, 16, fell minutes after he was taken to the staff room at Silver Point School
for having allegedly failed to submit his maths project on time.
School officials rushed him to a private hospital in Mukundapur, where the doctors declared him dead on arrival.
Based on a complaint from the boy’s father, the police had started a murder case against four persons — principal, vice-principal and two other teachers of the school.
The boy’s father had moved Calcutta High Court seeking its intervention in the probe that was being conducted by the police.
The lawyer appearing on behalf of the father submitted a prayer before the court to hand over the investigation to an “independent agency” so that the guilty were identified and punished. He also alleged that the police were “not cooperating” with the family and had declined to hand over a copy of the post-mortem report to them.
After going through the submission, the court directed the investigators to seize CCTV footage from the school and expedite their probe.
The judge also ordered the investigators to place the post-mortem report before a group of expert doctors at SSKM Hospital and seek their opinion on the nature of injuries and the cause of the boy’s death.
The judge asked the police to hand a copy of the post-mortem report to the family of the deceased.
The judge directed the police to produce the case dairy before the court on
October 6, when the matter will come up for hearing again.
The family has been blaming the school for the boy’s death and alleged that he was targeted because his father was leading parents in demanding a fee cut during the Covid pandemic.
The school has denied the allegations and claimed that there was no bias against Sk Shan, who used to actively participate in the school’s programmes.
The police had said earlier that they had come across CCTV footage that showed the boy standing outside the staff room holding his ears. The school had denied having asked the boy to stand holding his ears.