Aarushi Talwar case closure application shocked her parents & whole Nation

She was a bubbly 14-year-old from a wealthy family, leading the life of an average teenager — home, school, email, friends, Orkut and SMSes.

All these vapourised on May 16 two years ago when Arushi Talwar was found in a pool of blood in her bedroom at L- 32 Jalvayu Vihar, Noida. It was a grotesque death. Her throat was slit. The murder of well- known dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar’s daughter immediately sent shockwaves across the nation and jolted the police out of their snug bed on that hot summer day.

The Uttar Pradesh Police’s Noida wing swung into action and declared that the Talwars’ missing 45- year- old domestic help, Hemraj, as the main suspect.

The very next day (that is on May 17) Hemraj’s body was found on the terrace of the flat. He was brutally murdered, too. So much for their investigation, the police apparently failed to look at the terrace on the first day.

Now that the domestic servant trail went cold, an embarrassed UP administration shunted out the local police station in- charge and SP ( city) Mahesh Mishra. The case would from now on be handled only by seniormost officers of Noida police. Within a week, on May 23, then Noida police SSP A. Satish Ganesh went to town with a second theory. Arushi was killed for honour, he said.

“It could be a case of honour killing. It could be a crime of passion. It’s possible that one of the murders was incidental. Which one we don’t know yet,” Ganesh said. Within 24 hours of Ganesh’s statements, IG Gurdarshan Singh of Meerut Range told the world that Rajesh Talwar murdered his daughter.

He even gave graphic details of what could have happened that fateful night. It goes like this: Talwar returned home around 11 pm on May 15 and discovered Hemraj and Arushi in an “objectionable but not compromising” position.

In a fit of rage, Talwar attacked Hemraj with a hammer and later slit his throat on the terrace around 1 am that night and left the body there. “Talwar then returned to his third floor flat, had whiskey and then slaughtered his daughter, who was then on her bed in her bedroom, adjacent to her parents’ bedroom. She was also first hit with a heavy weapon and then her throat was slit,” Singh told the media.

He didn’t stop at that. Singh floated a third theory. He said the Talwars were “philanderers”, and Hemraj and Arushi were aware of this. They would discuss this and it brought them closer to each other, despite their difference in age.

Arushi and Hemraj had shared this uneasy information about the Talwars with their close friends. “Hemraj had told his friends of a threat to his life. Had he told the police, this (the double murder) could have been averted,” Singh said.

Defending the police for the goof-up on the first day, Singh later said: “Talwar told us to go after the killer (Hemraj) and searching the house would be just a waste of time. He even offered to give a reward of ` 20,000 to anybody who could catch the killer. Clearly this was done to mislead us.” That was not the end of police theories. They were trying to outdo each other. Barely 24 hours after Singh’s tale, UP additional DGP Brij Lal told reporters in Lucknow that Talwar’s affair with Anita Durrani, a fellow doctor, led to strained relations that culminated in the twin murders.

There was no evidence to prove all these and the police were allegedly bent on sending Talwar to the gallows. Sniffing danger, Talwar’s counsel Pinaki Mishra on May 28 demanded a CBI investigation.

UP chief minister Mayawati reluctantly decided to hand over the case to the CBI on May 30, though she still backed her police to the hilt. “ I will write to the Centre for a CBI inquiry just because the victim’s family has said they have lost confidence in UP Police,” she said.