Aarushi-Hemraj murder Case: Rajesh and Nupur Talwar held guilty,sentencing tomorrow

A special CBI court on Monday held the doctor couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar guilty in connection with the murder of their teenaged daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj at their Noida residence in May 2008.

Delivering the much-awaited judgment, Special Judge Shyam Lal pronounced the couple guilty. The prosecution had been able to establish an unbreakable chain of circumstantial evidence pointing to their guilt. The couple were immediately taken into custody to be sent to jail for serving sentencing which will be quantified by the court later.

Aarushi was found in her room with her throat slit on the morning of May 16, 2008. The mystery deepened further when the body of domestic help Hemraj, who according to her dentist father Rajesh Talwar had murdered her, was found dumped on the terrace a day later.

The Uttar Pradesh Police that took up investigation initially failed to discover Hemraj’s body, which cast a shadow on their findings that it was none other than Dr. Talwar who had killed both his daughter and the help “after they were found in an objectionable though not compromising position”.

Following an uproar over the U.P. police claims, the case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI concluded within a month that Dr. Talwar’s assistant Krishna, in connivance with his accomplices Raj Kumar and Vijay Mandal, had murdered the two following a failed attempt to sexually assault Aarushi in an inebriated state.

The first CBI team led by IPS officer Arun Kumar backed its findings with reports on scientific tests like brain mapping and narco-analysis that the three helps were subjected to on more than one occasion.

However, the theory did not throw up much evidence material to the case which was later debunked under the tenure of CBI Director Ashwani Kumar. A new team was constituted to probe the findings afresh.

In a complete U-turn, the second team gave a clean chit to the three helps and instead found evidence indicating the role of Aarushi’s parents. They also seized her mobile phone, whose data had been erased completely, and a golf stick as the “murder weapon” found dumped in the building shaft.

Citing insufficient evidence against the Talwars, the agency on December 29, 2010, filed a closure report that highlighted both the mitigating and the aggravating facts. The court refused to allow closure and instead found sufficient material in the report to frame charges against the dentist couple. The duo were charged with offences of murder and destruction of evidence, and an additional charge of misleading the probe was invoked against Rajesh Talwar for filing a wrong FIR with the Noida police claiming that his domestic help Hemraj had murdered his daughter.