No one killed Aarushi Talwar

The Talwars may have got justice, but the fact is ‘no one killed Aarushi.”

The verdict is out and the Talwars have been acquitted of all charges in the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case. Dr Rajesh and Nupur Talwar the parents of Aarushi were acquitted by the Allahabad High Court.

While for the Talwars justice may have been done, the same continues to evade the deceased and it has become a case of 'nobody killed Aarushi."

Since day one there were several questions that remained unanswered. How were the two killed and whether they were killed with a Khukri. Whether they were hit with golf clubs or their throats slit with a sharp object. Who killed them was the most important question. The prosecution maintained that it was a case of honour killing while the defence maitained that the Talwars were innocent.

The postmortem report and the testimony of the doctor who conducted the autopsy was conflicting in nature while a witness in the case turned hostile and another changed his statement. Crucial evidence was lost thanks to errors by the forensic laboratory.

During the early days of hearing before the court the CBI was unable to trace the witnesses. The driver Umesh Sharma had said in court that he had signed his statement out of fear. Sharma one of the prosecution witnesses said that he had taken out two golf clubs from Rajesh Talwar's car and kept it in the room of Hemraj a few months before the murder.

The CBI took over the case in 2008. The agency arrested Rajesh on May 23 2008, but he was released on bail in July after the CBI said that there was no evidence against him. The CBI then arrested Krishna, a helper at Talwar's dental clinic on the basis of a narco analysis test. At that time the CBI believed that Krishna committed the murder as Rajesh Talwar had shouted at him.

However the case took another u-turn when a second CBI team replaced the first in 2009. In December 2009, the CBI filed a closure report stating that, "The findings of the investigation reveal a number of circumstances that indicate the involvement of the parents in the crime and cover-up." The trial court rejected the report and asked them to reopen the investigations.

All through the bone of contention has been the murder weapon. The first CBI team had said that it was Krishna's khukri that was used in the murder. A 2008 report by a specialists committee had said that the khukri could have been the weapon. However the doctor who prepared the report changed his testimony and said that the bodies bore V-shaped wounds that could have come from a golf club. He also said the injuries on the necks of the two victims were identical and could have been made by a surgically-trained person.

Another disclosure that led to the confusion was the testimony of K K Gautam, a retired UP police officer. He told the court that the first CBI team had attributed to him observations he had not made, and left out vital information. The first CBI team said Gautam had noticed depressions on Hemraj's bed that suggested three people might have sat on it. The CBI said he had mentioned seeing three glasses on the floor. The washroom was dirty, as if several people had used it.

Another witness in the case was Bharti Mandal who had joined the Talwar household a week before the murder. She had said that the main door of the house was not locked from outside. This led credence to the CBI's theory that this was an inside job. However she later suggested that her responses had been tutored. I am saying whatever has been told to me she said later.

The other mystery was the purple pillowcase that belonged to Krishna. The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) had said in 2008 that Hemraj's blood was found on it. "In February 2011 this was brought up before the Allahabad High Court. Later the CBI said orally in court that Krishna's pillow cover had got exchanged with Hemraj's. Later, the CDFD said a typographical error had occurred and the pillowcases had got exchanged.

Going by all this one could say it is one of the mysterious and twisted cases the country has witnessed. The Talwars may have got justice, but the fact is 'no one killed Aarushi."

OneIndia News