Gurugram Cyberbullying Case: Son Dead, Father Gone, Justice Never Came

For Five Years, A Father Did Not Miss A Hearing. Then His Chair Went Empty

When The Probe first walked into a Gurugram apartment to report on the death of 17-year-old Manav Singh, his father Manoj Kumar was still counting the days. He counted them out loud, in court, on social media, to anyone who would listen. The Probe followed his fight from the start, reported it when almost no one else would, and watched that reporting push the National Human Rights Commission to intervene and hand the cyberbullying case to the CB-CID. Manoj thanked us then. He said justice was still a long way off, but that at least someone was watching. In December 2025, of a sudden cause, Manoj died. And when we returned to the court file, we found something that stopped us cold: the case he built now drifts with no one to carry it, and the court does not even seem to know the man fighting it is gone.

Who Manav Was

Manav Singh was a Class 12 student in Gurugram, his parents' only child, a cheerful boy who wanted to study abroad. On the night of 4 May 2020, he had dinner with his family, ordered burgers, and went to his room. Soon he was dead, having jumped from the eleventh floor of the family's apartment. His parents told The Probe they had left him smiling only minutes earlier. "I saw Manav's head split open like a watermelon and I saw my son die on the spot," his father said. "This is not a simple case of suicide. This is cyber murder."

Also Read:  Gurugram Parents Allege Cyber Murder of Son, Await Justice

What happened in those final forty-five minutes was, his parents said, a coordinated cyberbullying assault. After a defamatory post appeared against him on Instagram, they told The Probe, some twenty to thirty people descended on him online, calling and messaging without pause. "They were jumping on to Manav on the internet like wolves," his father said. Just before he died, Manav sent his parents a message saying goodbye. The Probe reported all of this at a time when the story was going untold, and accessed the electronic evidence that showed the trolling in the minutes before his death.

How The Case Was Botched

The family's account of the police response was damning, and The Probe documented it. Gurugram police took ten days to register the FIR. When the parents went to the police as victims, they said, they were treated like the accused. The first chargesheet, they pointed out, was filed against unknown persons, without invoking the cyberbullying provisions of the IT Act that they believed the case demanded.

The delays were not just the family's complaint; the court itself said so. A Gurugram magistrate, reviewing the sluggish probe, recorded that the investigating officers were "working at a low pace in the present matter for reasons best known to them," and ordered the police to file a status report every fifteen days. The parents said the social media platforms were no help either. Crucial digital records from Instagram and Snapchat, the material that could have shown exactly who did what that night, were not obtained or produced in time. It was this collapse of the cyberbullying probe, evidence left ungathered, deadlines ignored, that finally forced the NHRC to step in.

Also Read:  Gurugram cyber bullying case transferred to CB-CID by NHRC for reinvestigation: The Probe impact

The Fight That Would Not Stop, And The NHRC Impact

Through all of it, Manoj Kumar refused to let go. He moved from pillar to post, filed the applications, kept the case alive in court, and kept telling his son's story publicly long after the news cycle had moved on. The Probe stayed with him. Our continued reporting on the Gurugram case kept the pressure on, and it produced a result: the NHRC examined the record, found the investigation "nothing but a vitiated investigation which cannot rise to a valid chargesheet," and transferred the matter to the CB-CID for reinvestigation.

"When no media was reporting on this issue, The Probe had taken it up even before its launch," Manoj said at the time. "I really am grateful to NHRC and The Probe for their support, but justice still is a long way."

What The CB-CID Was Meant To Do

The transfer to the CB-CID was the single biggest win of Manoj's long fight. The NHRC had been blunt about why it was needed: no arrests reflected in the enquiry report, mobile phones not sent for forensics in time, a final report filed without the phone, Instagram and Snapchat data that the case turned on. The Commission directed Haryana's home department to have the matter reinvestigated properly and to report back.

But a transfer on paper is not the same as an investigation on the ground. The court record shows the CB-CID's action taken report being chased hearing after hearing, adjournment after adjournment, the report simply not arriving. At one point the court noted the notice to the station house officer had not even been issued by its own staff, and ordered a show cause notice. The report that Manoj had fought years to obtain was finally placed on record only in August 2025, a few short months before he died.

Also Read:  Cyberbullying: Two years on, Justice Evades Gurugram Parents

The Court That Does Not Know He Is Gone

In the months after Manoj's death, the case he had carried on his own shoulders kept getting called, and no one came. "None for complainant," the orders say, again and again. On one date the case was called several times through the morning; the magistrate waited until noon, and still no one appeared for the man who had never once stopped appearing. The court, "in the interest of justice", declined to pass any adverse order and simply issued another notice to the complainant and his counsel.

The complainant is dead. The notices are going out to a man who cannot receive them. His lawyer, who once gave interviews and led the campaign, was unavailable for a comment when we reached out to him. The file was summoned by an appellate court and sent back. Fresh dates were fixed, then fixed again, the next stretching into 2027.

The Gurugram cyberbullying case that a father spent five years dragging toward justice now moves entirely on its own momentum, which is to say it barely moves at all, past a chair in the courtroom that will stay empty.

What Remains

Manoj Singh buried his only son and then gave whatever he had left to a fight he did not live to finish. He wanted one thing: for a court to look honestly at how his boy was hounded to death, and to say so. He did not get it. His wife has since relocated from Gurugram to another city. The case carries on in name, in a courtroom, under a father's name that no longer belongs to anyone who will walk through the door. That, in the end, is what a cyberbullying death cost one family: a boy, then his father, and a fight that outlived them both and still points at nothing.