INDA • Aarushi TALWAR, 14 ~ New Delhi

Courts Orders Charges Again Parents Of A Murdered Girl After They Were Cleared By CBI
February 12, 2011



NEW DELHI – The twisting and turning Aarushi double murder case took its most dramatic turn on Wednesday. The court hearing the case said the CBI’s closure report, which said there wasn’t enough to prosecute her parents with, contained sufficient evidence to charge them with murder, destruction of evidence and an act done by persons with a common interest.

Aarushi and Hemraj Banjade, the Talwars’ domestic help, were found murdered in their Noida home on the night of May 16, 2008.

Doctors Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, the murdered teen’s parents, have now been asked to appear before the court on February 28.

They won’t be arrested till then, CBI sources said, but added that “the material is sufficient to bring the case to a conviction stage”

The Talwars said they were shocked by the order.

“This is a banana republic,” Rajesh said.

The CBI, which investigated the case for more than 30 months, submitted its closure report to the special CBI court in Ghaziabad on December 29 last year.

The report said that though the Talwars were suspects on the basis of circumstantial evidence, it was not enough to implicate them.

CBI officials and lawyers said Nupur Talwar has been made an accused since “she could not explain the whereabouts of the key to Aarushi’s room which was daily kept in her custody but was found missing after the murder”.

The Talwars’ lawyers said there were “serious and deliberate lapses on the part of the CBI during the investigations”.

“The Talwars have a choice to either file a revision at a session court or a high court or they can file a petition at the high court for quashing Wednesday’s order,” one of the Talwars’ lawyers, Praveen Rai, told HT.

http://thelinkpaper.ca/?p=4027

Talwar’s colleagues are the ‘key’

Even though 140 witnesses were listed in the closure report filed by the CBI, only two of them garnered enough courage to record their statements before a magistrate. It is these two statements that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is expected to rely heavily upon, during a possible
trial in a Ghaziabad court, where Dr Rajesh and Nupur Talwar now stand accused of murder, destruction of evidence and other charges.

Recorded under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), the statements of two of Dr Rajesh Talwar’s colleagues—Dr Rohit Kocchar and Dr Rajeev Kumar Varshney— may prove crucial in nailing the real accused in one of the most complex murders in the country till date. The statements are legally admissible.

On December 15, 2010, Kocchar and Varshney had stated that they had seen some bloodstains on the door leading to the terrace and some stains on the staircase leading to the terrace that had been wiped. They claim they had pointed out the same Talwar.

Meanwhile, before the court’s order, when Talwar submitted an 85-page protest petition, he had stated that he had not observed the existence or non-existence of the blood stains/drag marks after the discovery of the crime as he had been confined to his house. He had also stated that no police official or any other person had revealed the existence of such marks to him.

The CBI had earlier filed a closure report in the case,

which had detailed and relied heavily on circumstantial evidence against the Talwars, after vital evidence was feared to be lost.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/talwar-s-colleagues-are-the-key/article1-662011.a

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A very curious case of selective interpretation

May 16, 2008 | When her blood-stained body was lying before him for his postmortem investigation, the only unusual detail Sunil Dohre recorded about Aarushi's vagina was that there was a "whitish discharge." As for the column related to the external examination of her genitals, the Uttar Pradesh government doctor simply wrote "NAD", which is an abbreviation for "nothing abnormal detected." Again, after an internal examination of Aarushi's genitals, all he wrote while performing his statutory duty was NAD.

July 18, 2008 | In his statement to the first CBI team headed by Arun Kumar, Dohre disclosed that Aarushi's uncle Dinesh Talwar had asked him during the postmortem if there was any sign of rape. Dohre added that he had told the uncle that nothing could be said about that possibility till the two slides of vaginal swab he had taken were pathologically tested. He reiterated that the only feature that stood out at the time of the postmortem was the whitish discharge in her vagina.

September 30, 2009 | Within 20 days of taking over the case, the second CBI team headed by Nilabh Kishore took another statement from Dohre. He now recalled a bunch of new details about Aarushi's private parts and revived, in effect, the so-called honour killing theory first propounded by the Uttar Pradesh police when they arrested her father Rajesh Talwar a week after her murder. Sixteen months after recording NAD in his postmortem report, Dohre said for the first time (a) that Aarushi's hymen was ruptured and it had an old tear, (b) that her vaginal orifice was "unduly large" and the mouth of her cervix was visible and (c) that her private parts appeared to have been cleaned after her death because the whitish discharge was confined to the vagina when it should have spread to the "entire area."

The dubious circumstances in which the postmortem doctor had made these belated discoveries . . . . .

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I declined CBI request for touch DNA in Aarushi case: Lalji Singh

LUCKNOW: The Central Bureau of Investigation had approached DNA fingerprint expert Lalji Singh for a touch DNA test of the crime site to unravel the Aarushi murder mystery. Singh, however, turned down the request as it was now too late to do so. The crime scene had been altered and samples contaminated.

Talking to TOI on the sidelines of Agriculture Science Congress here, Singh said that Aarushi Talwar murder mystery could have been solved easily with the help of DNA fingerprinting technique had police acted promptly and collected the DNA sample soon after the crime.

"The technique is reliable and can provide conclusive proof in cases of heinous crimes like rape and murder even without witness," Singh, who was the founder director of Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, said. The only pre-condition for this was that DNA sample should have been collected without wasting time, as the time lag would only increase the chances of contamination and lead to wrong conclusions.

Touch DNA would not have been useful in this case as it was now too late (more than six months) for collecting the samples especially when the crime site had been altered. "The CBI approached me for investigation in this case on the basis of touch DNA but I refused as it was too late for any conclusive result," he said.

The investigating agencies, he said, should take a lesson from Aarushi case that the first thing they should do is to collect the DNA sample. For this purpose, he said, the government should formulate a policy and make it mandatory for investigating officials to collect DNA samples from the crime site on a priority basis.

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Aarushi on prime time
February 18, 2011

I am mystified by our ongoing fascination with the murder two years ago of 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar. Part of our morbid interest, I am guessing, stems from the mysteriousness of this double murder. Despite three investigations — though let’s not accuse the Noida police of anything close to an ‘investigation’ — two from separate CBI teams, we are no closer to the truth about what happened on the night of May 15, 2008, when the ninth grade teenager was killed at home.

First we are told that the servant, Hemraj Banjade, did it. A day later when the body of the unfortunate Banjade was discovered, Noida police say it was the father, Rajesh Talwar, who had done it. Motives keep changing, from incest to wife-swapping and honour killing to ‘characterless’ behaviour. The father is arrested, the father is released. The case is transferred to the CBI, then a second team takes over. The murder weapon keeps changing: it’s a khukri, no it’s a surgical instrument or perhaps it’s a golf club. Every norm of decency is set aside as Aarushi’s postmortem vaginal examination becomes the subject of speculation.

If this is trial by insinuation, then our investigating agencies have succeeded.

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Aarushi Talwar's parents move Allahabad high court challenging CBI court order
February 21, 2011


Arushi Talwar

The parents of Aarushi Talwar on Monday moved the Allahabad high court challenging a CBI court order passed earlier this month whereby they have been accused of the murder of their teenaged daughter and domestic help, Hemraj, three years ago.

The petition, filed by Aarushi's parents Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar, has challenged the CBI court order of February 9 whereby the couple have been accused of having murdered their daughter and the domestic help besides engaging in criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.

According to the Talwars' counsel Gopal Chaturvedi, the petitioners have submitted that the CBI court had passed its order "without taking into consideration the objections submitted by us".

The case is likely to come up for hearing on Wednesday, February 23.

Aarushi was found dead inside her Noida residence in May 2008 with her throat slit and the body of Hemraj was recovered later from the terrace.

The CBI, which was entrusted with the investigation in the case following an uproar over alleged shoddy probe by the Uttar Pradesh police, had recently submitted its closure report before the special CBI court at Ghaziabad wherein the Talwar couple were not not named as suspects.

However, the court decided to proceed with the trial against the couple observing that there was "enough evidence" against them.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_aarushi-talwar-s-parents-move-high-court-challenging-cbi-court-order_1510999

Aarushi Talwar case: Allahabad High Court to hear Talwars' plea today
February 23, 2011

Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court will today hear a plea filed by Aarushi Talwar's parents, Nupur and Rajesh Talwar, challenging the order of the CBI court in Ghaziabad which made them the main accused for the murder of their teenage daughter.

The petition says that the CBI conducted a half-hearted and incomplete investigation into the case and that scientific methods of criminal investigation like 'touch DNA' were not adopted to gather evidence against the accused.

The Talwars now want the High Court to strike down the order passed by the Ghaziabad court and order further investigation into the death of their daughter and their household help Hemraj.

On the 9th of this month, a CBI court charged Nupur and Rajesh Talwar with killing the 13-year-old in their Noida home in May 2008. They were also accused of criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.


Rajesh, bandaged - Nupur - Arushi Talwar

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Talwars seek to have their trial set aside
TNN, Feb 24, 2011, 01.44am IST

ALLAHABAD: The parents of murdered teenager Aarushi Talwar on Wednesday urged the Allahabad high court to set aside the order of a special CBI court to put them on trial for the gruesome killing of their daughter. Responding to the plea, the high court fixed Friday as the next date of hearing in the case.

Appearing on behalf of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the court of Justice B K Narayan, senior counsel Gopal Chaturvedi requested the court to set aside the February 9 order of the special CBI court to put them on trial for the killing of Aarushi in Noida about three years ago.

The counsel for the Talwars also urged the court to pass an order staying the order of the special CBI court and issue directions for further investigation in the matter.

Talking to TOI, Samit Gopal, who assisted the senior counsel during the arguments, said: "We have also requested the court to call for the records of the lower court in the case." He claimed that the CBI counsel did not file any reply in the case, which has been put on court records. After this, the court fixed February 25 as the next date of hearing in the case, he added.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/New-Article/articleshow/7559060.cms

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Times of India: The Complete Arushi Report

Talwars' no show in court; warrants issued
February 28, 2011


Arushi's father Rajesh Talwar and mother Nupur Talwar during an interview with a TV Channel.

Even as Aarushi Talwar's parents sought exemption from personal appearance in court, a CBI special judicial magistrate (SJM) court on Monday issued bailable warrants against them. The dentist couple had failed to appear before the court in compliance with its summons issued on February 9.

Asked to appear in court in the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case, Dr Nupur Talwar sought exemption on the ground that she was present in Allahabad for signing court documents and that her criminal revision petition was pending at the Allahabad high court against the SJM's summon orders.

Dr Rajesh Talwar sought exemption on medical grounds and stated that he was under treatment for injuries suffered on his face and hands after being attacked inside the Ghaziabad court complex by Utsav Sharma on January 25.

Meanwhile, CBI SJM Priti Singh rejected both the applications and ordered the dentist couple to furnish a bond of Rs 20,000 each, for their appearance on March 22 - the next date of hearing.

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