Guilty beyond doubt?
The Special CBI Court’s awarding of life imprisonment to Rajesh and Nupur Talwar for murdering their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj led a family friend of the Talwars to express regret that Aarushi would get justice only when the true killers were punished. Of course now the couple can appeal the verdict to the High Court, but the entire manner in which the investigating agencies ~at first the police and later the two CBI teams~ conducted the investigation, has left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth, casting a doubt on not only their capabilities but raising a fundamental question whether forensic science can be tailored to suit a predetermined theory.
Initially all and sundry were allowed to tamper with the crime scene and walk into the Talwar’s Noida house the days following the murder as if it were a market place. The Talwars themselves have been charged with destroying evidence. The media too had a big hand in rummaging through the place to get their ‘pound of flesh breaking news’ and thereafter putting out theories, often without evidence. One wonders whether the media pressure was itself responsible for the police following a particular line of investigation and then nailing the compounder and two domestics. Needless to say that even after they were declared innocent, after serving as undertrials in jail, their lives and families have been permanently shattered, with no employer ready to offer them a job to make a living.
A sealing of the crime scene and intense and thorough investigation in 2008 itself could have enabled the investigating agencies to nail the real culprits. Thereafter, though there were several conjectures whether there were four people in the house or seven as put out by the two CBI teams, one cannot come to a definite conclusion given the lapse of time and even fraudulent claims made by the investigators.
Now, and even at the start, the theory of honour killing of the daughter by the parents had been speculated over liaison with the Nepali domestic Hemraj who was also murdered. The parents are accused of filing a delayed and false FIR.
In a stinging summation, the CBI judge has castigated the parents who were duty bound to be the best protectors of their own children, but he said there are freaks in history of mankind where the father and the mother became the killers of their own progeny. He went on to quote the scriptures that this was in breach of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.”
The CBI court has held that it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused parents are the perpetrators of the crime. Though the accused domestics would feel vindicated by the verdict, it has left many questioning the credibility of the justice system and investigating agencies and asking whether the verdict had brought closure to one of India’s most widely discussed criminal cases. The verdict has left many questions unanswered, much evidence ignored. More importantly, the credibility of the CBI has taken a severe beating. Its definite line that the domestics were guilty, that they had confessed to the crime in the narcoanalysis test and then the backtracking by the second CBI team and then turning and declaring the Talwar dentist couple as the alleged murderers has made a public spectacle of crime investigation. The CBI has even been accused of twisting evidence, even as the case was not a political one. While the line that the Talwars are guilty and that justice has been done in the case is also buttressed by many in the media and the public, the shoddy investigations has cast a shadow on the way evidence is gathered, corroborated and presented and the way the criminal justice system works. Moreover, it would shake the faith of many and put a big question mark on the verdict since it has not been proved beyond doubt as to who the real assassins were.
