AARUSHI MURDER CASE: ALLAHABAD HIGH COURT ACQUITS TALWAR COUPLE FOR INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE

There is a strong possibility that (the) incident was caused by some outsider,” a bench comprising justices BK Narayana and AK Mishra said, upholding the Talwars’ appeal against the CBI court verdict.

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday, 12^th October, 2017 in its 263-page verdict ends, at least for now, the nine-year ordeal of the Noida couple who were sentenced to life by a Ghaziabad CBI court on November 28, 2013 for the double murder that shook the nation with its element of filicide.

The Court acquitted Rajesh and Nupur Talwar of the murder of their teenage daughter Aarushi and their domestic help Hemraj in 2008. The Court give Talwars the “benefit of doubt,” subsequently the Court ordered that the two be immediately released, saying that circumstantial evidence against them was found to be inconclusive and evidence supplied by the prosecution counsel was not sufficient.

The fourteen-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars’ Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45- year-old Hemraj later he was discovered dead the next day on the terrace of the apartment building in Noida.

On November 26, 2013, a Division Bench of Justice B K Narayana and Justice A K Mishra of the Allahabad High Court admitted the appeals by the Talwars against the Ghaziabad CBI Court order sentencing them to life imprisonment. The CBI Court sentenced them to rigorous imprisonment for life, a fine of Rs 10,000 each for murder, rigorous imprisonment for five years and a fine of Rs 5,000 each for destruction of evidence, a one-year sentence of simple imprisonment for Rajesh Talwar and an additional fine of Rs 2,000 for filing a misleading FIR. All sentences were to run concurrently.

The verdict ends a nine-year ordeal of the parents who were found guilty by a CBI court of murdering 14-year-old Aarushi in a fit of rage as they suspected her of having an affair with Hemraj

The Court said, “The chain of evidence stood snapped the moment the prosecution failed to provide evidence that the Talwars’ flat was locked from the inside and the evidence suggests there is strong possibility of outsiders having access to the flat and having left the same after committing the double murders. We do not find any reason to fasten the guilt of double murders on the Talwars merely on the proof of the deceased being last seen in their flat on the night of 15.5.2008, especially in the view of the alternate hypothesis of the double murder by the prosecution.”

Justice Narayana further said, “Suspicion, however great, cannot take the place of proof.”

A.N. Mulla, the Additional Government Advocate for the State in the case said, “We will most probably appeal this case in the Supreme Court. But only the CBI can say what the next step will be.”

It is shameful that the real killers are still unknown.

Taruna Verma

Senior Associate