A bus conductor who provided assistance with carrying the injured Pradyuman was initially charged with the murder, and allegedly confessed to police, but was later found to be innocent.
Following a transfer of the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation, an unnamed sixteen year old student from the same school has since been charged with his murder.
[citation needed] Thakur's death attracted widespread public concern and criticism for the conditions regarding safety in schools in India.
[7] Police detained and questioned ten persons, and observed blood stains on the shirt of Ashok Kumar, the school bus conductor who had assisted with carrying Pradyuman to a car which took him to the hospital.
[5] A cellphone video recorded by a witness at the scene of the crime showed school authorities asking Kumar to help pick up Pradyuman to transport him to the hospital.
[5][8] Haryana Police also initially told a Gurugram court that they believed an additional suspect was involved, and that an attempt had been made to tamper with the crime scene.
However, this statement was contradicted by a senior police official who stated to the press that "Only Ashok has murdered Pradyuman, no other person is involved.
[28][29] The initial investigation of the murder by Gurugram Police was met with wide public criticism, including by Pradyuman's father, Barun Thakur.
[10] The CBI sent a forensic team to the school to review the evidence and scene of crime independently from the Haryana Police investigation on 22 September 2017 .
[17] Following their investigation, the CBI identified a different knife as the murder weapon, stating that they had recovered it from the scene of the crime and that it had been hidden inside one of the washrooms.
This contradicted the Haryana Police's statement that a knife recovered at the scene of the crime, and identified as part of the school bus tool kit, was the murder weapon.
[33] On 7 November 2017, the CBI arrested an unnamed class XI student, aged 16, from Ryan International School for Pradyuman Thakur's murder.
[3] The Haryana Police later stated that while they had questioned the unnamed student as a witness immediately after the murder, they had found no evidence suggesting that he was responsible for the death of Pradyuman Thakur at the time.
[19][36] The CBI stated that they were able to establish that the knife recovered from the washroom had been purchased by the unnamed student at a local market, a few days earlier.
[3] A statement from the CBI indicated that they believed the unnamed student killed Pradyuman to postpone his examinations and parent-teacher meetings at the school.
[39][34] A CBI official stated to press that the student "...believed that a sensational act would either force the school to shut down for a few days or create enough disruption to cancel the exams and the parent-teacher meeting.
[40] The unnamed student was quoted as later confirming to the Juvenile Justice Board that he knew Pradyuman as they attended the same music class.
[41] The unnamed student's parent's have subsequently accused the CBI of torturing their son in order to elicit a false confession from him.
[46] Ryan International School management made a motion to the Supreme Court to transfer the case outside Haryana to ensure a fair trial.
[47] In order to determine how the trial would proceed, the Juvenile Justice Board set up a committee which included a psychologist from the Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS, Rohtak) for an expert opinion on the accused unnamed student.
After conducting evaluations on the unnamed student's mental and physical state, the Juvenile Justice Board declared on 20 December 2017, that he would be treated as an adult and undergo a regular trial in court.
An appeal was filed against this decision at the Supreme Court, which stayed all proceedings in the case until it had determined the question of whether the student should be tried as a juvenile or adult.
[52] In response to these protests, the Chief Minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, assured parents that strict action would be taken against the criminal.
Since Batra revealed the insufficient security, and had no financial resources to deal with the situation herself, she was deemed not responsible for the murder of the young child.
[citation needed] Following the murder of Pradyuman Thakur, the Haryana government instituted a number of policies aimed at improving school safety.
[43] The Ministry of Human Resources and Development announced an initiative to train school teachers to address mental health issues following the murder.
[citation needed] Dibakar Banerjee's 2024 anthology film Love Sex Aur Dhokha 2 had a subplot that involved the death of a juvenile kid, which had quite a few similarities with the incident.