While the trial court’s ruling, holding the Talwars guilty of murdering their daughter and a domestic help, brings the sensational case to a level of closure, the last legal word is yet to be heard. Meanwhile, the Talwar camp is busy discrediting the verdict
Soon after a trial court on Monday pronounced Rajesh and Nupur Talwar guilty of murdering their teenage daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj, an army of family, friends and sympathisers of the Talwars invaded television studios and expressed outrage over the verdict. Their arguments ranged from emotional (‘How can the parents kill their dear daughter!’) to legal (‘Verdict is based on mere and dubious circumstantial evidence’) to the frivolous (‘Media is responsible for creating a negative perception against the parents’) to the questionable (‘Trial courts are influenced by popular perceptions and not the law’). They were helped by television anchors who seemed overwhelmed by the outpouring of distress and anger over the judgement. It was left to Times Now and its chief Arnab Goswami to put the issue in perspective and show the mirror to those who have been assailing the trial court’s ruling. Unlike most anchors, Mr Goswami posed uncomfortable questions, which expectedly drew unsatisfactory responses from those who have been at the vanguard in the ‘support-Talwars’ movement.
It is nobody’s case that the trial court’s verdict is the last word. It will be challenged in the higher courts, and we do not know whether the judgement will be upheld or turned down. However, in their desperation to discredit the verdict, the pro-Talwar panelists have rhetorically asked what credibility would the media and those hailing the ruling would be left with in case a higher court set aside the trial court’s order. It can well be argued back: Will they accept that the Talwars’ murdered their teenaged daughter and domestic help in cold blood if a higher court upholds the rulingIJ Or will they yet again claim that the courts are influenced by public perceptions and that the media (which, incidentally, has been more than kind to the parents —with a leading magazine even running a cover story some time ago on how the Talwars were being framed) has behaved irresponsiblyIJ
There appears to be a class bias in the attitude that the Talwar family and sympathisers have adopted. They are angry that the upper-middle class parents should be called murderers. They are upset that the parents should have been convicted on the basis of ‘insufficient and circumstantial evidence’. Yet, the people who are today ranting against the ‘unfairness’ had maintained a deafening silence when the local police had picked up another domestic help Krishna soon after the killings took place on the night of May 15-16, 2008, and tortured him, seeking confessions to the twin murders. When he broke down before the court and revealed his trauma, these people shed no tears. Their voice has been in favour of first-the-accused-and-now-the-convicted parents but never for the domestic helps who went through physical and mental agony for crimes they had not committed. Some responsibility for the trauma of these helps lies with the Talwars, because they either gave the impression that the helps could be the culprits or allowed such impression that the police had gathered to go unchallenged.
A similar behaviour was evident when Nupur Talwar promptly pinned the blame for Aarushi’s death on Hemraj (whose body the police had not yet discovered). In an expression of shock, she reportedly told a domestic help, Bharti Mandal, on May 16, “look what Hemraj has done!” It’s relevant to note that she made the remark when investigations had not even begun. How did she know that Hemraj was the killerIJ The police were, of course, obliging, instantly registering a case of murder against the domestic help. They were left red-faced when the so-called accused’s body was discovered in the house.
The class prejudice apart, what has helped the Talwars and their sympathisers to rave is the admittedly shoddy manner in which the authorities went about conducting the probe into the twin murders. The police did not follow even the basic operating procedures such as sanitising the site of the crime and collecting evidence. As a result, crucial material was lost as people from the neighbourhood, friends and family members trampled all over the Talwars’ residence in Noida where the murders had taken place. The Central Bureau of Investigation took charge of the case within a fortnight of the incident, and in less than two months of a supposed probe, gave a clean chit to Rajesh Talwar.
With bipartisan observers raising question marks on the investigation and a change at the helm of the CBI, a new inquiry team was formed in September 2009. In December 2010, the team filed a closure report on grounds of insufficient evidence to prosecute. The matter would have ended there but for the court’s rejection of the closure report.
It is pertinent to remember that the investigating authorities, whether it was the Uttar Pradesh Police or later the CBI, always considered the Talwars (or at least Rajesh Talwar) as the most likely suspect. The police had arrested the father a week after the murders but he was bailed out after the first CBI probe team exonerated him. In its closure report, the second team had clearly named the Talwars as the prime suspect but added that it wanted a closure for lack of clinching evidence against the parents. The CBI court had in response rejected the closure report and directed the CBI to proceed with the investigations after arraigning Rajesh and Nupur Talwar as the accused. The parents then went to the High Court and finally the Supreme Court, in vain. The trial began after the apex court in January 2012 dismissed the accused’s plea and allowed the trial to proceed.
The pro-Talwar camp does not fail to mention that the parents had vehemently opposed the CBI’s closure report and had demanded that the probe agency must find the killers. The camp argues that had the Talwars been the killers, they would have welcomed the closure of the case. The fact is that the parents had opposed the closure report because it mentioned them as prime suspects and left the possibility open for a future investigation against them. Had the closure report not named them, they would have perhaps not objected to the CBI’s move.
Talwars’ supporters have been dismissive of the circumstantial evidence on the basis of which the trial court has convicted Aarushi’s parents. It’s as if circumstantial evidence does not matter or that it is no ground for convictions. There have been many instances where, for want of direct, physical evidence in the form of witnesses etc to the crime, the courts have relied upon circumstantial evidence that were beyond reasonable doubt, to pass judgements.
Moreover, it’s not that direct evidence always works. Model Jessica lal had been shot in the presence of several people at a bar club in Delhi in April 1999, yet a trial court acquitted all the accused on grounds of insufficient evidence. Key prosecution witnesses had turned hostile or given plain misleading statements. The High Court set the matter right by convicting the prime accused and sentencing him to a life-term; the verdict was later upheld by the Supreme Court.
Finally, let’s not forget that the Talwars have been also convicted for tampering with evidence and misleading the investigating authorities. Why would an innocent person do that — or create meaningless legal hurdles, as the court was constrained to observe with sharp displeasure on occasionsIJ