Big blot on CBI

The case should not be closed. We want to find our daughter’s killers,” Rajesh and Nupur Talwar had told their counsel Rebecca John, when the CBI was filing its closure report in 2010 in the double murder case of their only daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj Banjade. On October 16, the couple got a closure of sorts, though not the one they had initially hoped for. They walked out of Dasna jail in Ghaziabad, four years after they were arrested in the 2008 murder case. A trial court had sentenced them to life in 2013. This month, the Allahabad High Court ordered their acquittal.

“It is a fact that the Talwars did not want the investigation to be closed. They wanted that the accused be brought to book. But, the turn of events later actually saw them defending their own actions,” John said, as she prepared to meet the Talwar couple.

The turn of events Rebecca fleetingly mentioned had seen Rajesh and Nupur being accused of the gruesome double murder. The subsequent trial of the parents had shaken the collective conscience of the country.

Aarushi was found murdered in her bedroom on May 16, 2008, just days before her 14th birthday. In his FIR, Rajesh had said it was Hemraj who had killed his daughter and fled. But the next day, Hemraj’s body was found on the terrace of the Talwar residence at Jalvayu Vihar, Noida. As the case got complicated, the Uttar Pradesh government handed over the investigation to the CBI, which started probing the role of domestic servants frequenting the Talwar residence.

The role of Rajesh’s assistant Krishna and his friends Raj Kumar and Vijay Mandal was probed by the CBI. The trio was given a clean chit by a second CBI team. When the closure report was filed in the trial court in 2010, it named Rajesh Talwar as the prime accused. But, owing to lack of evidence, the CBI did not press charges against him. However, the court converted the closure report into a chargesheet and summoned the parents.

“Everyone is calling it a closure report. It was not a closure report. Rather it was a chargesheet camouflaged by the CBI,” alleged Tanveer Ahmed Mir, senior defence counsel of the Talwars. “The investigating officer manipulated the case and fabricated statements of my clients in such a way that the court would summon them.”

Mir argued that the CBI team led by superintendent of police A.G.L. Kaul had developed animosity against the couple. “The couple clearly did not know how to deal with the CBI officials,” he said. “They entered into arguments and altercations. As a result, the CBI team started twisting their statements and changing facts.”

Also, the CBI ignored evidence that was in favour of the Talwars, said Mir, like the purple pillow cover seized from Krishna’s house in June 2008. The pillow cover was sent for forensic analysis to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics. The CDFD opined that the pillow cover carried Hemraj’s DNA. Another pillow cover recovered from Hemraj’s bedroom was also sent to the Hyderabad lab. “After a CBI officer visited the CDFD in March 2011, the lab said a ‘typographical error’ led to the mixing up of report on the two pillows. The lab clarified that Hemraj’s DNA was found only on the pillow recovered from his bedroom. The High Court said it was the most clinching piece of evidence in favour of the Talwars and established the presence of an outsider—Krishna—in the house of Talwars. But, the CBI deliberately ignored it,” said Mir.

But, CBI officials who probed the case said circumstantial evidence pointed towards the role of the parents and that investigations in brutal crime cases were an uphill task. “We cannot share a blow-by-blow account of the investigations, but we have submitted all evidence in court. We had admitted there were loopholes in investigation,” said a CBI official.

Former CBI director A.P. Singh said the team worked under very difficult circumstances as the crime scene had been compromised when the agency took over the case. “There were no eyewitnesses and no weapons of offence recovered from the crime scene. So, we were working on circumstantial evidence only. First, the team had to rule out that the servants were the perpetrators of the crime. Then, it had to rule out an outsider’s job. It is only after that that we zeroed in on the parents. But we did not have any clinching evidence against them,” Singh said.

Uttar Pradesh police officials, who had initially probed the case and failed to sanitise and secure the crime scene, are tightlipped today. “The CBI has investigated the case. It is for them to respond,” said a police official who was part of the team that visited the crime spot.

So, does the quest for justice for Aarushi end here? While a CBI official said they “will decide the next course of action after legally examining the contours of the judgment,” John said, “It is for the couple to decide whether they want a reinvestigation. But, if you ask me as a lawyer, time is of essence in a murder investigation. It is not a civil matter that it can be probed again. All the evidence is lost. Unless there is any fresh clue or evidence, nothing will be achieved.”

Meanwhile, the task seems to be cut out for family and friends of the Talwars—to help the couple cope with their past and present. The dentist couple no longer live at their Jalvayu Vihar residence. Currently on a visit to the Golden Temple, they will be living with Rajesh’s brother, Dinesh, and his wife, Vandana, in Delhi. Dinesh, who was travelling abroad when news of the acquittal came in, has been a big support to the couple, both financially and emotionally. “Yes, I heard they have been acquitted,” he said over phone. Vandana was more vocal in expressing her angst. “What should I say? You know what the media has done to us,” she said.

John recalled how Nupur used to call her every morning after reading the newspaper—headlines screaming about how the couple had murdered their daughter in a fit of rage after finding her in a compromising position with their domestic help. “All the investigation made for titillating gossip for so many of us,” said John. “Without knowing the truth, we started judging the family. Is that correct? The brutality with which the system dealt with them has scarred them for life.”

Did they break down any moment? “Yes, of course they did. But if you are asking me if they lost the will to fight, no, they did not,” said John, who has been the Talwars’ counsel since 2009.

Their life definitely hasn’t been easy. “They have lost friends and are completely isolated,” said John. “Their life outside jail was terrible, they were attacked outside court premises during court hearings. Now, to come back to a changed world will require a long process of rehabilitation.”

A friend of the couple, who did not wish to be named, said, “When you are forced to deal with a situation, somehow you find the strength to go through it. As Nupur’s brother once told me, I never saw strength in her as a child. Today, people talk about how she appears to be so strong. But, what do you do when you are faced with something as monumental as this? They were professionals and they will need to restart their life. Just one aspect of their struggle has mercifully ended. They will take a while to adjust.”

But, questions remain. The most important one being: who killed Aarushi and Hemraj?