On the morning of May 16, 2008, soon-to-turn 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found dead in the bedroom of her house in Jalvayu Vihar, Noida. Her throat was slit and her head bludgeoned. The family’s live-in domestic help Hemraj Banjade was seen as the prime suspect in the murder, but, a day later, Hemraj (45) was found dead on the terrace of the same flat. His throat was also slit and he had suffered injuries to his head. There were wounds all over his body and the door to the terrace was found locked from inside.
Noida Police suspected the twin murders to be an insider job and said that they had been committed with ‘surgical precision’. Talwars’ former domestic help Vishnu Sharma was initially named as a suspect in the case.
Six days after Aarushi’s body was found, police suspected it to be a case of honour killing and her parents, Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar, both dentists, came under the scanner. Noida Police alleged that Rajesh had committed the twin murders after finding Aarushi and Hemraj in an “objectionable” position. However, no forensic or material evidence was provided to substantiate the claim.
On May 23, 2008 Rajesh Talwar was arrested for the double murder. As the case became a topic of household debate with divided public opinion on who killed Aarushi, the case was handed over to the CBI.
On June 13, CBI arrested Krishna Thadaraj, an assistant at Rajesh’s Noida clinic. On June 20, CBI conducted a lie detector test on Rajesh Talwar. Five days later, a second lie detector test was also conducted on Aarushi’s mother, Nupur Talwar, as the first one was found to be inconclusive. After spending almost two months in jail, Rajesh Talwar got bail on July 12.
As the investigation continued, narco-analysis tests were conducted on the Talwars. In December 2010, CBI submitted a closure report on the grounds of “insufficient evidence”. Giving a clean chit to the servants, CBI named Rajesh Talwar as the prime suspect. However, due to lack of evidence, CBI did not charge him. The court said the case could not be closed.
The CBI court awarded life imprisonment to the Talwar couple a day later. The couple then filed an appeal in the Allahabad High Court challenging the previous court’s order.
They called the verdit unfair and alleged that the points which proved Rajesh and Nupur were not produced by the CBI before the court.
On October 12, 2017, the High Court acquitted Rajesh and Nupur Talwar of all charges, ruling that the CBI’s evidence was insufficient to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and that they should be given the benefit of the doubt rather than being convicted solely on suspicion.
It took four years, but the parents are finally free. The case is still unsolved, and 6 CBI directors have changed over the years; one of them stated that if they had managed to get the fingerprints on the whiskey bottle, they could have had the killer within a month, but it has now been unsolved for 168 months.
IT’S NEARLY 13 YEARS BUT THE MYSTERY OF AARUSHI’S MURDER REMAINS UNSOLVED!!
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