India’s premier investigative agency, the CBI, has failed to solve the two-and-a-half-year-old Aarushi-Hemraj murder case. After investigating the gruesome double murder of the 14-year-old daughter of dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, the CBI on Wednesday filed a closure report before a Ghaziabad court citing lack of evidence against the suspects.
The closure report says the CBI could not find sufficient evidence to nail anyone. The CBI has expressed its inability, in the report, to carry out any further probe because of lack of sufficient evidence at the scene of the crime. Aarushi Talwar was found dead, her throat slit, in her parent’s home at Jalvayu Vihar, Noida, on May 15, 2008. The body of their domestic help, 45-year-old Hemraj, earlier seen as a suspect, was found on the terrace the next day.
When the Uttar Pradesh police had failed to reach any conclusion, the case had been handed over to the CBI, which began its probe under joint director Arun Kumar on June 1, 2008 with the arrest of Rajesh Talwar in the case. But when agency officials failed to make any headway in the case, the CBI constituted a new team, headed by SP Neelabh Kishore, to probe the case. The CBI, which failed to trace the murder weapon, had also declared a reward of `1 lakh for anybody who would lead it to the crucial pieces of evidence. The weapon used in this case was a heavy and sharp-edged, sources said.
Reacting to the closure report, Dr Rajesh Talwar told this newspaper: “It’s completely shocking. We are highly disappointed with the CBI probe. I don’t know what to do. But we will not rest at all. We are exploring other legal options.” He added, “There are no words to explain the agony and mental trauma that we have been facing since our daughter’s death. I want the murderers of my daughter, who are having a nice time, to be hanged. If I cannot get my daughter back, then they too do not have the right to live ... they must be hanged. Our heart sinks to know that her killers are still roaming free.” Dr Talwar said only their conviction would give them relief. “No punishment can be enough for them. We hope that we will get justice. It is this hope that has kept us alive. And this is the only thing we are expecting after the death of our daughter,” said Dr Talwar.
“We are the victims and we have been victimised right from the beginning. I don’t want to say much about that. My wife and me have suffered a lot. I just cannot put words to the kind of pressure that we were under. How we recovered from it is something only we can understand. Imagine a man being accused of killing his own daughter! In any case, life without her will never be the same again,” he said.
The CBI’s investigation of the SMSes and the call details of the mobile phones of the two deceased also failed to lead to the killers. According to sources, the CBI probe had revealed that on May 15, 2008, a day before Aarushi was murdered, she had received three SMSes on her mobile phone (9910520630), EMI No. 354568012881110. While the first SMS was received at 12.24 pm, the second was received at 1.08 pm on May 15 by Aarushi Talwar, sources said. She had received the last SMS at 6.32 pm the same day, sources added.
The CBI also questioned the deceased’s relatives, including her parents, cousin and the priest who had performed her last rites. CBI officials had also questioned Dr Rajesh Talwar’s elder brother, Dr Dinesh Talwar, his wife and their child in connection with the probe, sources added. The agency had also carried out a narco-analysis test on Nupur and Rajesh Talwar between February 8 and 20 this year at the Gandhinagar forensic laboratory. However, they failed to get any concrete clue. Agency officials had questioned some Noida policemen involved in the probe and had taken blood samples from the murder site.
However, sources in the CBI indicated that the possibility of tampering with certain evidence in the case could not be ruled out. Sources said a forensic examination of the vaginal swabs drawn from the victim at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics in Hyderabad had reportedly revealed they were not that of Aarushi Talwar. The CDFD in its report had reportedly said that no seminal fluid of the victim was sent to the centre. However, it had earlier been claimed that seminal fluid had been sent to the centre for forensic examination.
The agency had also conducted a narco-analysis test on Krishna (Dr Talwar’s lab assistant) and Rajkumar (the domestic help of the Talwars’ friend Durrani), but this too led nowhere. Krishna had confessed to the crime during the second narco-analysis test in Bengaluru last year and he had reportedly taken the names of Raj Kumar and Vijay Mandal.