Sir — Probably no other criminal case in India has evoked the sort of response that the double murder of teenaged Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj has stirred.
Dragging on for more than five years, with a series of blunders and goof-ups, right from the beginning the investigations into the sensational case had uncertainty written all over it. The Central Bureau of Investigation’s probe failed to solve the mystery. Rather than sift through the cobwebs of inscrutability that embraced the case, we had the beleaguered CBI adding a few more shrouds of its own before zeroing in on the Talwar couple on the strength of circumstantial evidence. One, however, gets the feeling that the conviction of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar was a matter of saving face for the harried crime sleuths, who were up a blind alley in their investigation of the crime.
No matter what different leads the police chose to follow, the fact remains that, in spite of a conviction and the handing down of a life-term for the Talwars by the special CBI court, the case is as muddled in mystery as it was when the murder was detected five-and-a-half years ago. One does not intend in any way to undermine the findings of the court, but it appears as if the investigating agency went about building up a case around the parents of the teenager absolutely sure that the Talwars indeed were the killers. But, had they exhausted all other avenuesIJ