Mumbai Mirror | Nov 7, 2013,
Central Bureau of Imagination
The Talwars are facing trial in the murders of their daughter Aarushi and help Hemraj
Avirook Sen

If you were incredibly foolish, then the CBI would have you believe this about the Aarushi-Hemraj murders:

* That Hemraj, the Talwars’ servant, was having sex with Aarushi while still wearing his slippers. When his body was found, a day after the Aarushi’s, on May 17, 2008, two days after he was killed, the slippers were on him. His post-mortem doctor, a witness for the CBI, has told the trial court this.

* That her father, Dr Rajesh Talwar saw this; was gravely, and suddenly, provoked. He went looking for a golf club, and finding one in the servant’s room, where it had been lying for the previous four months, came back and bludgeoned the two to death. Then, he went to his bar, pulled out a bottle of Ballantine’s and, according to the chief investigating officer AGL Kaul, took neat swigs of whiskey with the blood of two dead people on his hands.

* The CBI will also have you believe that Hemraj was carried to the terrace by Aarushi’s parents, Nupur and Rajesh Talwar, and dragged so as to hide the body.

They will also have you believe that Chunnilal Gautam, the first forensic expert on the scene, charged with the responsibility of collecting fingerprints and taking the first photographs after the murders, never actually took the trouble to take one flight of stairs up to the terrace to record vital parts of the crime scene on May 16, 2008, the day Aarushi was found murdered. This, despite the fact that three CBI witnesses claim that they had told the police they had seen blood on the stairs.

The defence demonstrated that Chunnilal Gautam, and the CBI counsel, committed one of the many acts of perjury in this case. Having claimed through the trial that there Gautam hadn’t been up the stairs leading up to the terrace where Hemraj’s body lay, the CBI was confronted with a document of their own. A document in which Gautam records how he recovered fingerprints from the stairs and the lock on the terrace door on 16 May, day 1 of the crime scene. It is part of the court record, but the CBI’s assumption is that no one reads them.

The circumstance of sex in slippers is unusual, to say the least. It is one of the reasons why an All India Institute of Scineces (AIIMS) expert committee concluded in 2008 that Hemraj was killed on the terrace; not dragged there when he was as good as dead.

This particular circumstance goes to the very heart of how the crime took place. If Hemraj walked up the stairs, how does the CBI’s “grave and sudden provocation” theory hold up? In two words: it doesn’t. No one with any instinct for survival would allow himself to be walked up a flight of stairs, followed by a madman with a golf club and a sharp weapon intent on killing him when they got there.

This scenario was too outlandish even by the CBI’s standards. This is why they went with the lie that Hemraj’s blood was found in Aarushi’s room. That is wasn’t has been demonstrated repeatedly at the trial court using the CBI’s own documents. But this hasn’t made the CBI counsel any less enthusiastic about the falsehood.

And what about that swig of whiskey? The bottle had what resembled fingerprints on it. DNA tests revealed that the blood of both victims was on the bottles. The murderer had touched the bottle…

But the fingerprints didn’t match the Talwars. Or, according to Chunnilal Gautam, any of the other suspects.

And here is the nub of the story: the CBI’s case is that no “outsider” would take dare to take a swig of whiskey after having committed the horrific crimes. But if there were prints, whose were they? It is established that they didn’t come from the Talwars–by the CBI.

And what about about the Talwars dragging Hemraj’s body across the terrace? The CBI contends this vehemently as a circumstance that displays the conduct of the guilty: ‘the do it, then they try and hide it’. The agency claims that is carried out a “scientific experiment” (with fake blood, and unfortunate volunteers) to see how the dragging actually took place.

But Kaul and his geniuses got this one especially wrong. The evidence the CBI has placed on record is this:

UP police: Hemraj was dragged east to west MS Dahiya (the CBI’s crime scene analyst): The body was dragged west to east

Rajinder Singh Dangi (the scientist who simulated the dragging): Hemraj was dragged north to south.

This is all part of the “evidence” that the CBI relies upon. And yes, you would have to be incredibly foolish to believe that all three statements were true. Even if we assume that Hemraj was actually dragged across the terrace, he could have only been dragged in one of three directions. Ergo, at least two of the CBI’s witnesses must be lying.

Having been on the case for a year and a half, I can say with certainty that they aren’t the only two.

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