Bombay HC adjourns Ryan trustees' bail plea till Wednesday

In a temporary reprieve on Tuesday, the Bombay High Court adjourned till Wednesday the hearing of an anticipatory bail application filed by the trustees of Ryan International Schools in the case of the death of a seven-year-old student in their Gurugram branch.

The trustees - Augustine F. Pinto, his wife Grace Pinto and their son Ryan Pinto - had on Monday filed the application seeking anticipatory transit bail to move an appropriate court in Haryana.

The names, whereabouts or the eligibility of the other trustees of the St Xavier's Educational Trust -- that manages the group's schools -- was not made clear.

The Trust is registered as a Public Charitable Trust in Maharashtra in the early 1980s.

Barring the three Pinto family members, it is unclear as of now whether the remaining trustees stand to be implicated in the case which has snowballed into a major national issue concerning safety and security of children in private schools.

The development comes in the wake of the brutal murder of a student, Pradhuman Thakur, on September 8, in the Ryan International School in Bhondsi in Haryana's Gurugram.

Pradhuman was found with his throat slit inside the school's washroom within an hour after his father dropped him off in the morning.

Meanwhile, hundreds of parents staged vociferous protests outside the Ryan International School branch in Sanpada, Navi Mumbai, demanding measures for safety and security of their children, on Tuesday morning.