Vinay Mahto Death Case: Father Challenges CBI Closure Report in Special Ranchi Court

Ranchi (IANS): A special CBI court on Friday heard a protest petition that the father of deceased school student Vinay Mahto filed to challenge the closure report the agency had submitted in the high-profile case.

The legal teams presented partial arguments during the hearing, after which the court fixed a date next week for further proceedings. Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Khushboo Kataruka raised questions over the CBI’s closure report and contested its findings.

The case dates back nearly a decade. Vinay Mahto, a 12-year-old Class 7 student of Sapphire International School in Ranchi, died on the night of February 4-5 in 2016, inside the school hostel premises. Staff found his blood-soaked body the next morning near the corridor of the teachers’ staff quarters on the campus located along Ranchi-Khunti Road.

In the immediate aftermath, Ranchi police termed the incident an ‘honour killing’. As per the police theory, Vinay had developed an inclination towards the daughter of Naseeya Hussain, a Hindi teacher at the school. Enraged by this, the teacher’s son, a Class 11 student, allegedly attacked Vinay with the intent to kill and later threw him from the first floor.

The police arrested four persons in the case—the teacher Naseeya Hussain, her husband Mohammad Arif, and their two minor children—and sent them to jail.

However, in July 2018, the Juvenile Justice Board acquitted both minors due to a lack of evidence, after which a district court ordered a fresh hearing in the matter.

Alleging serious lapses in the police probe, including the destruction of forensic evidence, Vinay’s father approached the Jharkhand High Court, which handed over the case to the CBI in July 2022.

The case took a new turn last month when the CBI submitted its closure report in court, rejecting the murder and criminal conspiracy angles and terming Vinay’s death an accident.

Dissatisfied with the findings, Vinay’s father, Manbahal Mahto, challenged the CBI’s conclusions through the protest petition, which the court is now considering.