Nation wants to know who killed Aarushi but will it ever know?
As a colleague pointed out the other day, the entire nation at this point of time wants to get into the mind, heart and soul of Aarushi’s parents Rajesh and Nupur Talwar to know what’s going on inside them. Did they have a hand in killing their 14-year-old daughter? If yes, was it in a fit of rage or was it cold-blooded and well thought out? If not, how are they dealing with the unraveling situation in which they now officially stand accused of killing their only child, a charge that had remained in the realm of sheer speculation thus far? What could have been their motive?
The Central Bureau of Investigation has said in its closure report that despite its best efforts, and despite the fact that all circumstantial evidence points to a role of the parents in the killing, it has been unable to find a motive to the crime, or for that matter, the murder weapon.
Was the Talwars’ alleged tampering with evidence merely fuelled to save their daughter’s reputation ante mortem? Or was it to script what the media dazzlingly calls a “perfect murder” for which the apex investigating authority of the land, the CBI, only has circumstantial evidence which rarely, if at all, stands up in court.
Was Aarushi raped? Was she not? Did she have consensual sex before being killed? Why was she cleaned up and who could have dressed her properly in two white sheets after her murder? All these questions and many, many more have been fuelling the imagination of the nation ever since she was found dead, her throat slit with “medical precision”, on the morning of May 16, 2008 by none other than her mother who insists she slept through the night along with her husband in the next room while her daughter was being done to death. Apparently, a noisy bedroom A/C blocked all other sounds from reaching the couple, or so they suggest.
Whatever may have happened on that darkest night of May in the posh Jal-Vayu Vihar flat in NOIDA where the dentist couple resided, one thing looks pretty certain: The case, despite the investigations being reordered by the court in reaction to a CBI closure report, may not really be solved — ever. We may never get to know who killed Aarushi and why.
For the Talwars’, this would be a very long legal battle they will be fighting for most part of their lives now. As for the CBI, it has been told in no uncertain terms to go ahead even despite the lack of clear-cut evidence and the absence of a motive. So where is this case really headed? Like many other questions that remained unanswered in this whodunit, this one too will beg for an answer but not get one, till of course someone sometime gives way and spills the beans. Talk to legal luminaries and they say, Indian law is such that circumstantial evidence has no value in courtroom proceedings and that the law is blind to suggestions even if they throw up glaring pointers.
But one thing is for sure. Aarushi and the circumstances surrounding her blood-curdling death, will continue to be discussed in legal classrooms as a classic “victim is dead but no one killed her” case study. Even after more than two years of the crime, the case is finding front-page headlines, full-page analyses, scores of speculative stories and a place in avid public discussions.
Another thing that stands out in this sordid saga of the high profile twin murder is the fact that the Talwars have led from the front in their own defence. The stark stoicism that Nupur has visually stuck to, both on TV and in her public appearances after having lost her daughter, see her husband named as prime suspect and then become a co-accused in the case is as stunning as the twin murder itself. Her friends, and there are very few now that speak on her behalf, attribute this strange lack of emotion she displays to her innate self-preservation in the light of the biggest and most crippling battle for vindication she has been fighting all through. Publicly, however, it comes across as so baffling that it could be equally categorised as sub-human or superhuman and even complicit. In contrast to her, even Rajesh Talwar has broken down and cried.
All said, the Aarushi murder case is disturbing at all ends: When it happened, many started questioning the trust between a parent and his/her progeny; when it unraveled, everyone questioned the role of the cops; when it was being investigated, so many unsavoury things happened, pointing towards the biggest most blatant cover-up; three years down the line when the premier investigating agency sought a closure, the outrage was as intense as it was when Aarushi was killed; the probe spanned a very wide range of investigations, forensic and otherwise, but failed to get to the hanky-panky that happened at various quarters, be it the mysterious phone call that the post-mortem conducting doctor got, or the failure to lift fingerprints from the whiskey bottle at the Talwar residence, or finding the body of the servant on the terrace only a day after the investigations in the same house, or for that matter, the sleuths’ failure to find out how many hands Aarushi’s cellphone changed before being found from Bulanshahr a year-and-a-half after she died.
These are just the tip of the questions the CBI has already said it has no trail to. What and how it will progress from hereon is again baffling, considering it has already completed the investigation and has nothing more to ask anyone. In the midst of all this, one thing is very worrying: What if the Talwars did not do it? Won’t that then be the biggest travesty of justice for this beleaguered couple? But then, the counterpoint is equally pertinent: What if they did?
Source: Sunday Pioneer, February 13, 2011
The Central Bureau of Investigation has said in its closure report that despite its best efforts, and despite the fact that all circumstantial evidence points to a role of the parents in the killing, it has been unable to find a motive to the crime, or for that matter, the murder weapon.
Was the Talwars’ alleged tampering with evidence merely fuelled to save their daughter’s reputation ante mortem? Or was it to script what the media dazzlingly calls a “perfect murder” for which the apex investigating authority of the land, the CBI, only has circumstantial evidence which rarely, if at all, stands up in court.
Was Aarushi raped? Was she not? Did she have consensual sex before being killed? Why was she cleaned up and who could have dressed her properly in two white sheets after her murder? All these questions and many, many more have been fuelling the imagination of the nation ever since she was found dead, her throat slit with “medical precision”, on the morning of May 16, 2008 by none other than her mother who insists she slept through the night along with her husband in the next room while her daughter was being done to death. Apparently, a noisy bedroom A/C blocked all other sounds from reaching the couple, or so they suggest.
Whatever may have happened on that darkest night of May in the posh Jal-Vayu Vihar flat in NOIDA where the dentist couple resided, one thing looks pretty certain: The case, despite the investigations being reordered by the court in reaction to a CBI closure report, may not really be solved — ever. We may never get to know who killed Aarushi and why.
For the Talwars’, this would be a very long legal battle they will be fighting for most part of their lives now. As for the CBI, it has been told in no uncertain terms to go ahead even despite the lack of clear-cut evidence and the absence of a motive. So where is this case really headed? Like many other questions that remained unanswered in this whodunit, this one too will beg for an answer but not get one, till of course someone sometime gives way and spills the beans. Talk to legal luminaries and they say, Indian law is such that circumstantial evidence has no value in courtroom proceedings and that the law is blind to suggestions even if they throw up glaring pointers.
But one thing is for sure. Aarushi and the circumstances surrounding her blood-curdling death, will continue to be discussed in legal classrooms as a classic “victim is dead but no one killed her” case study. Even after more than two years of the crime, the case is finding front-page headlines, full-page analyses, scores of speculative stories and a place in avid public discussions.
Another thing that stands out in this sordid saga of the high profile twin murder is the fact that the Talwars have led from the front in their own defence. The stark stoicism that Nupur has visually stuck to, both on TV and in her public appearances after having lost her daughter, see her husband named as prime suspect and then become a co-accused in the case is as stunning as the twin murder itself. Her friends, and there are very few now that speak on her behalf, attribute this strange lack of emotion she displays to her innate self-preservation in the light of the biggest and most crippling battle for vindication she has been fighting all through. Publicly, however, it comes across as so baffling that it could be equally categorised as sub-human or superhuman and even complicit. In contrast to her, even Rajesh Talwar has broken down and cried.
All said, the Aarushi murder case is disturbing at all ends: When it happened, many started questioning the trust between a parent and his/her progeny; when it unraveled, everyone questioned the role of the cops; when it was being investigated, so many unsavoury things happened, pointing towards the biggest most blatant cover-up; three years down the line when the premier investigating agency sought a closure, the outrage was as intense as it was when Aarushi was killed; the probe spanned a very wide range of investigations, forensic and otherwise, but failed to get to the hanky-panky that happened at various quarters, be it the mysterious phone call that the post-mortem conducting doctor got, or the failure to lift fingerprints from the whiskey bottle at the Talwar residence, or finding the body of the servant on the terrace only a day after the investigations in the same house, or for that matter, the sleuths’ failure to find out how many hands Aarushi’s cellphone changed before being found from Bulanshahr a year-and-a-half after she died.
These are just the tip of the questions the CBI has already said it has no trail to. What and how it will progress from hereon is again baffling, considering it has already completed the investigation and has nothing more to ask anyone. In the midst of all this, one thing is very worrying: What if the Talwars did not do it? Won’t that then be the biggest travesty of justice for this beleaguered couple? But then, the counterpoint is equally pertinent: What if they did?
Source: Sunday Pioneer, February 13, 2011
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