School in Dehradun buries boy’s body to hush up murder

DEHRADUN: A day after it was reported that a 12-year-old boarding school student, Vasu Yadav, was beaten to death with cricket bats and wickets by his seniors, more details regarding the case emerged on Wednesday. According to police, the school, in a bid to hush up the matter, had hurriedly buried the boy’s body inside the campus after doctors declared him dead.
There was also delay in taking the boy to the hospital after his seniors, both class XII students of the same school, beat him in a class room, allegedly tortured him and then pored cold water on him because they blamed him for stealing a packet of biscuit while the students were on an outing, leading to the school administration cancelling permission of all students to leave the campus.After the beating, the boy remained in the class room for the next few hours till he was found by the hostel warden.
“He was beaten up in phases in the afternoon, while he was taken to hospital in late evening,” SSP Dehradun Nivedita Kukreti told TOI.
Usha Negi, chairperson of the Uttarakhand State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, whose intervention in the case led to the matter coming to light, said that that all possible attempts seemed to have been done to cover up the incident. “The incident took place on March 10 and we were informed about it on March 11, following which we visited the school. However, when we got there, we found that the school administration had buried the body.” She added that “they didn’t even bother to inform the parents, who live in Hapur, that their child had died”.