Class IX student found dead with 22 stab wounds in Vadodara school

Police also recovered a bag containing seven sharp-edged weapons and a liquid mixture of chilli powder from a terrace adjacent to the school building. The schoolbag, according to the police, belongs to a Class X student of the same school, who has gone missing. Police suspect the assailants threw it away after killing the boy.

“The owner of the bag is one of our prime suspects, but we are yet to see the video footage from closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed in the school. We also believe that it could be a planned murder, and more than one student could be involved in it,” said Investigation Officer A K Wadiya of Wadi police station.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (Vadodara City) S G Patil said that the prime suspect had called police to the school two days ago after a teacher scolded him for not bringing a book to class.

“So he is a little notorious, and we are looking for him,” said Patil, adding that three teams of police have been formed to track him.

According to a police source, in one of the CCTV footage, the victim and the suspect are seen “walking hand in hand from the ground floor to the first floor” where the toilet is situated.

“It was around 12.15 pm. The afternoon session (of the school) had just begun. Teachers were assembled at the principal’s office when students began shouting. Teachers and principal ran upstairs to the first floor to find the boy lying in a pool of blood in the toilet,” said a trustee of the school.

The victim, who stayed with his uncle in Vadodara City, had taken transfer to the school this year after completing his initial schooling from another school in the city. He had been to school just for a day before he was killed.

“He had joined the school just day before yesterday, and did not talk about any friends or enemies or any kind of a fight at school,” the boy’s father, who runs a tea stall at a village in Anand district, told The Indian Express.

Police have registered a case of murder against unidentified persons and sent the body for a post-mortem.

Last September, a similar murder had taken place at a private school in Gurgaon where a class II student was found dead with his throat slit in the school’s washroom. A class XI student of the same school is the accused in the murder case.