In a major development, the Allahabad High Court, on Tuesday, rejected the application of Aarushi-Hemraj murder accused Dr Rajesh Talwar and Dr Nupur Talwar, seeking summoning of the witnesses including some CBI officials prior to recording of their statements by the CBI special court in Ghaziabad. The daughter of doctor couple, Aarushi Talwar and their domestic help, Hemraj were found murdered at their Noida residence in May 2008.
Dismissing the application, the bench of Justice RD Khare said that the prosecution had unfettered power to decide how many witnesses are to be produced and examined. The statements of doctor couple were being recorded by the Ghaziabad trial court, under Section 313 of CrPC, during pendency of their application in the High Court.
The court observed that there was no reason for the accused couple to suspect that the trial will be unfair in the trial court. Counsel of the accused couple, Rebecca John had contended before the High Court that the CBI deliberately dropped the names of the 14 witnesses whose names had been mentioned in the chargesheet thus misleading the court. Since the court had summoned the accused for trial, it was incumbent upon it to call all the prosecution witnesses mentioned in the chargesheet, she argued. Examination of the witnesses by the defence was necessary to bring out the contradictions in their statements made before investigating agency earlier, she had added.