Ranchi, Feb. 5: A Class VII student of a reputable residential school - hale and hearty until he went to bed last night - was found dead on the front porch of the teachers' hostel on campus in the small hours today, his brutally bludgeoned face prompting his father to cry torture and police to file murder charges.

The post-mortem report of 12-year-old Vinay Kumar Mahto, who was studying at Sapphire International School in Hardag, 25km from the state capital, for the past eight years, is officially awaited, but a professor of forensic science at RIMS revealed that the boy was subjected to "severe physical torture" and that his death couldn't have been a case of an accident or a suicide that the cradle management had been trying to insinuate since the body was discovered.

Three teachers and five guards have been detained for questioning. Ranchi deputy commissioner Manoj Kumar has ordered a probe by the district superintendent of education, while the school has decided to stay shut for the next three days.

A slew of unanswered questions like why the barefoot child walked from his hostel to that of his teachers, 750 metres away, in the dead of night and how he fell off the five-storey building as hinted by a section of school officials is likely to dog investigators trying to piece together the puzzle of the gruesome incident.

What has further raised the bereaved family's suspicions is that the school management initially toned down the nature and scale of injuries while informing the boy's father, businessman and Namkum resident Manbahal Mahto. Manbahal was later told that his eldest son was lying dead at the RIMS emergency.

Highly placed sources in the police have privately admitted to The Telegraph that they were also looking into a sexual assault angle in the case.

According to school insiders, Vinay was last seen in his hostel room around 10.30pm yesterday. Around 1.30am today, his lifeless body was found in a pool of blood below the five-storey teachers' hostel. Vinay was taken to the private Guru Nanak Hospital and Research Centre, where he was declared brought dead. The body was later sent to RIMS in Bariatu for autopsy.

Father Manbahal, who owns several brick kilns in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, has squarely blamed the school administration for Vinay's death in his written statement to Bariatu police.

"My son was killed and the school management knows who killed him. It is suppressing facts. The school kept saying that he sustained minor injuries and had fever. At RIMS, I noticed a deep wound above the left eye of my son as if an iron rod had been pierced. Someone used rods and boulders to batter him (to death)," the bereaved man told The Telegraph.

Vinay's two younger brothers - Vivek (10) and Vipul (6) - are students of Class V and LKG in the same school. Manbahal rued that he spent Rs 10.50 lakh every year on their education and the death of a son was not what he had perceived in his worst nightmare.

Ranchi SSP Kuldeep Dwivedi said a forensic team was collecting evidence and the post-mortem report was yet to arrive. "In such a situation, it is difficult to comment on how the boy died. However, preliminary probe supported by circumstantial evidence does suggest foul play," he said.

The professor of forensic science at RIMS, who conducted the post-mortem, told The Telegraph that Vinay had multiple and grim injuries on his body, which were unlikely due to a fall. "The injuries are fresh and may have been inflicted within 48 hours. The boy had deep forehead gash, broken teeth, bleeding liver and fractures. These are indicative of torture," he said.

The Hardag campus falls under the jurisdiction of Tupudana police, with whom an FIR was lodged tonight.

Hatia ASP Prashant Anand said that the FIR had been filed under Sections 302 (murder) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC against the school management. But, no one has been named.

Another officer, who confirmed the eight detentions, said a 30-second CCTV camera footage of the school showed the boy going out of his hostel room barefooted around 1.09am. "Apart from this, there is nothing to suggest how the boy reached the teachers' hostel," he said.

School principal Dhruba Das expressed his inability to explain the circumstances under which Vinay died. "The boy was suffering from fever. It is difficult to say why he came out of his hostel at night and how he sustained injuries. We are shocked. The boy was sober, intelligent, co-operative and cute. He was studying in the school for eight years," Das said.

School co-chairperson Mohita Sahu echoed Das. "It is difficult to say whether it is an accident or suicide or something else. It is still a mystery for us."

Art teacher Durbanand Jana, the first to notice Vinay's body and alert the management, said he was working late for their annual day. "When I was returning to our hostel around 1.30am from the programme venue 400 metres away, I saw the boy in a pool of blood."

The unnatural and untimely death triggered a brief blockade on the Ranchi-Khunti highway this afternoon. Earlier, local residents also protested inside the campus with the body until police intervened.

Established in 2007 and located on Ranchi-Khunti Road, CBSE-affiliated Sapphire International School has 405 students on its rolls till Class XII, many of them children of businessmen, and IAS and IPS officers. It has two three-storey hostels, one each for boys and girls. Around 145 students, including 24 girls, stay in the two hostels. Of the total 81 teachers, 40 stay in the lone teachers' hostel.

The 40-acre campus boasts more than 80 surveillance cameras, 16 security guards and two dogs, both Great Danes. It has indoor and outdoor sports facilities, smart classrooms, a swimming pool and AC buses. Several eminent people, like former Union coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal and noted actor Naseeruddin Shah, have graced the campus during the school's annual day programmes in the past.