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On 26 January 2013 Shree Paradkar of the Toronto Star reported “Aarushi Talwar murder:

Inside story of India’s most controversial trial”

Four-and-a-half years, one state police force, two federal investigative teams, two sets of

suspects, five arrests and countless fumbles later, the murder remains unsolved.

New Delhi, India—The game of cricket, a passion for money, dreams, earthquakes and

religious riots: Aarushi Talwar, 13, was lost in the world of the novel The 3 Mistakes of My

Life . It was the night of May 15, 2008.

The next morning, this only child of two dentists was found dead on her bed in the New

Delhi suburb of Noida, her body covered with her white flannel blanket. There was blood on

the pillow, blood on the walls, blood on the floor. A camouflage-print school bag on her face

covered cuts on her head, inflicted by three blows. Her throat had been slit.

Nov. 25, 2013 update: A family reels from the impact of the guilty verdict

One week later, my family and I in Toronto turned on our television and, along with millions

in India, watched a packed press conference where police declared Aarushi’s father, Rajesh

Talwar, then 44, a murderer. The facts, as presented by Inspector-General Gurdarshan Singh,

were these:

Rajesh was having an affair with another dentist. “His extramarital affair was known to both

the girl and Hemraj (the family’s 45-year-old cook). The two used to discuss this and had

become close. Dr. Rajesh could not tolerate this even though his character was not good . . .

“He killed her in a fit of rage even though his character was just as poor as his daughter’s (for

her relationship with Hemraj).”

Sex. Illicit affairs. Murder. Indian media, which combines British tabloid sensibility with

U.S. cable’s cutthroat competitiveness, snapped it up and fed it to a gossip-hungry audience,

catapulting the crime to the top of the news cycle and making Aarushi a household name.

“ India’s JonBenet Ramsey case? ” asked a Time magazine headline.

Four-and-a-half years, one state police force, two federal investigative teams, two sets of

suspects, five arrests and countless fumbles later, Aarushi’s murder remains unsolved. Both

her parents have been charged with murder and conspiracy. Her father is also charged with

destruction of evidence. They are free on bail, facing trial.

Aarushi’s mother Nupur, now 47, is bewildered but defiant. “They (people) want a soap-

opera situation,” she tells me. “I can’t stop anyone’s mouth. They’re free to think what they

wish to think. But that doesn’t change the truth.”

Nupur is my cousin.

For a long time, I could not comprehend what was happening. My family’s account of

Aarushi’s death and the investigation diverged from the media coverage so thoroughly that it

was as if they were different cases. But after my cousin was jailed last spring, I knew I had to

go to Delhi. I had grown up in India and had worked there as a journalist before moving to

Canada. It was painful to watch Rajesh and Nupur being ripped from their sheltered, middle-

class cocoon and flung down a rabbit hole that is India’s justice system.

This is not a story of grief or loss, although a child was murdered. It is not a story of

conspiracy, although “facts” have repeatedly changed. It is not a story of helplessness,

although it pits one family against their country. It is a story of two people on trial for murder

with a questionable motive, no proven murder weapon and evidence that even investigators

admit has holes. Two people who lost their daughter, lost their happiness and lost their naive

illusions about their homeland. “I never expected what has happened to us to happen in

India,” says Rajesh.

This is a story of betrayal.

May 15 was the second-last day of classes at Delhi Public School before it closed for the

summer. Aarushi and her friends were discussing her birthday sleepover that weekend, prank

calls and boys. She was in the middle of a break-up with a boyfriend of one month, a boy she

had met for lunch and movies. Her parents knew about him and some of her friends envied

the family openness. She was a huge fan of Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan. When she saw

him in a commercial, she would say to her friends, “I wish I could just jump into the TV and

marry him right now.” She was shy, but there was one secret desire she confided in friends. “I

want to become famous.”

That evening, Hemraj Banjade, the Talwars’ live-in Nepali cook, prepared okra, lentils and

rotis. He took a phone call at 8 on his cell phone. Dinner was at 9:30. Afterward, Aarushi

went to her room. Her parents followed with an early birthday surprise: a Sony 10-megapixel

camera that was much better than the model she had asked for. Click, click, click, the last one

taken at 10:10 just before her parents retired to their bedroom. One of those photos would

identify Nupur’s clothes as the ones she wore in the evening and in the morning, before and

after the murder.

It was typically hot for May, around 45C. Air conditioners were on in both bedrooms. At 11,

Aarushi was reading her novel when Nupur came into Aarushi’s room to turn on the Internet

router. A police report would later note Rajesh sent an email to the American Academy of

Implant Dentistry at 11:37:54 p.m. and that he was on the computer until 11:45.

The doorbell woke Nupur and Rajesh at about 6 a.m. Hemraj usually let in the maid but a

groggy Nupur had to answer the front door. Where was Hemraj?

Nupur tried his cell phone. No one answered and the ringing stopped abruptly. When she

called again, the phone had been switched off.

Rajesh came into the living room. He was surprised to see a near-empty whisky bottle on the

dining table. Surprise turned to alarm. “Check on Aarushi,” he said to Nupur. They rushed

into her bedroom. There she lay in her blue pyjamas, covered by a sheet, the schoolbag on her

face. Underneath, her head turned to one side, a necklace of blood.

“Rajesh started shouting and screaming,” Nupur says. “I was inanimate. I couldn’t shout or

scream.” The maid came in, saw what had happened and called neighbours. Those first few

days are a blur for Rajesh and Nupur. But the memory of Aarushi’s bloodied body haunts

them. They die a little every day.

By 6:50 a.m. , the police arrived. The media gathered by 8, drawn to a story about murder in

an affluent neighbourhood. “An open-and-shut case” a senior police officer told the Talwars.

Hemraj, still missing, was the prime suspect. The media reported police saying he had

consumed whisky, broken into Aarushi’s bedroom, assaulted her, hit her with the blunt edge

of a kukri — a Nepali knife — and cut her with its sharp blade. Police announced a 20,000

rupee ($400) reward for tips leading to his capture.

Police did not cordon off the crime scene. At least 100 people — friends, family, journalists

and the curious — traipsed in and out of the Talwars’ home. Blood was not only in Aarushi’s

room but also upstairs on the handles of the locked door to the roof terrace. A neighbour

testified later that he had pointed out the blood to a policeman, who mused about the door

being an escape route. The key could not be found and police did not break open the door.

A post-mortem was conducted by noon. It lasted a little more than an hour and established

the cause of death as “shock due to hypovolumia (sic)” or excessive bleeding. It determined

the time since death as “1 to 1 1/2 day (sic).”

The report observed three wounds to Aarushi’s head, and measured the incision on her neck

at 14 centimetres by six centimeters. It also noted the presence of “whitish discharge” at her

vagina and wrote that the genital area was “NAD” — nothing abnormal detected. Dinesh

Talwar, Rajesh’s brother, asked the post-mortem doctor if Aarushi had been raped. The

doctor said there was no sign of it, but that the vaginal discharge would be tested.

The body was brought home and laid on ice slabs in the living room. “Nupur had turned to

stone,” says our cousin Smita Patil. “She just sat there, expressionless, biting her lip, stroking

Aarushi’s hair, running her fingers on her face like you would with a sleeping child.”

The body was decomposing on the fast-melting ice. Police allowed Aarushi’s room to be

cleaned. A large piece of the mattress had been cut out and sent to a forensics lab along with

the pillow, bedsheet and clothes. When cleaners took the mattress to the terrace, it dripped

blood on the stairs. The terrace door was still locked, so they threw the mattress on the

neighbour’s terrace.

Family elders pushed for cremation, saying it would give the parents closure. Dinesh

reconfirmed that police did not need the body for further examination. Aarushi was cremated

around 5 p.m. The wood pyre burned through the night. The ashes would be collected the

next day in a hand-stitched cloth bag and immersed in the holy Ganges River.

Nupur’s mother , Lata Chitnis, 72, is the second of my mother’s two older sisters. She was a

small-town girl with aristocratic roots from India’s western state of Maharashtra; my most

illustrious maternal ancestors were trusted diwans or chief advisers to a revered 17th-century

king named Shivaji. My aunt and my uncle had, through travel, broadened their outlook and

embraced cosmopolitan values.

Nupur was my cool cousin who spent the first few years of her life in England, where her

father, an Indian Air Force officer, was posted at the High Commission in London. I call her

Nupur didi — a respectful address for an older sister. Nupur was shy but academically

brilliant. In the mid-1980s, when she brought home fellow dental school student Rajesh

Talwar, a Punjabi, there was no hue and cry at home.

As with cross-racial partnerships in Canada, marrying outside the community is still rare in

India. But Nupur had not been exposed to orthodoxy. She had never been expected to serve

elders and men in the family before feeding herself. Indeed, she didn’t know how to cook.

Rajesh and Nupur were married in 1989.

Aarushi’s birth in 1994 gave my Aunt Lata deep joy, and she would regale us with tales of

every development in her first grandchild’s life. Nupur moved from Delhi to suburban Noida

so her parents could help with the baby. While Nupur was busy building her career, her

mother fed Aarushi, soothed her, played with her, taught her. And when Aarushi was older,

she stayed with her grandparents after school, until her parents were done with their patients.

Aarushi was a picky eater, my aunt, a fabulous cook.

My aunt is a gentle soul, given to putting family ahead of herself, fretting and feeding

everyone. When she talks, it is with a smile playing about her lips. That smile is all but gone.

“I hate cooking,” she says flatly. When we’re going through photos for this story, my aunt

gazes at forgotten images, transported to happier times.

“Look at this one,” she says in Marathi — our mother tongue — pointing to a photo of

toddler Aarushi sitting in a vegetable basket. “Such an imp, my baby.” And then, softly: “She

was still little, you know. She wouldn’t even have comprehended these people were killing

her.” Tears. “It must have happened so quickly, she wouldn’t have felt any pain. Right?”

Where was Hemraj?

A day after Aarushi’s body was found, visitors continued to arrive with condolences, some of

whom barely knew the family. Among them was retired police officer K.K. Gautam. “My

police instincts took over,” he was quoted as saying in the media. “I checked Hemraj’s room

and the bathroom and then noticed the bloodstains on the stairs leading to the terrace. . . .

“I broke open the door and found Hemraj’s body lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He had

a slit mark on his throat and many injury marks on his body. His body was severely

decomposed.” Rajesh told police the bloating was so bad he couldn’t be sure it was Hemraj

— a statement that would later be taken as evidence he was obstructing the investigation.

There was a bloody palm print on the stucco wall next to Hemraj’s body. A chunk of the wall

was removed and sent to a forensics lab. Police photographed a bloody shoe print on the

terrace. An autopsy, hastily conducted that night, recorded injuries similar to Aarushi’s. It

also noted abrasions to his elbows. And it determined the time since death as “1 1/2 to 2

days.”

The “Noida double murders,” as they became known, spawned millions of armchair

detectives duking it out on Internet forums and in living rooms. Every development, every

twist, was covered by the media. National talk shows dissected the case. Police were usually

anonymously quoted. TV networks hired private investigators. The media hammered away

with questions. How could the parents have slept through the murders? Why did they rush to

cremate Aarushi? Why did they clean the crime scene so quickly?

The house was rich with evidence. But police missed the dead body on the roof. They were

unable to identify fingerprints on the whisky bottle, which had been found with the blood of

Aarushi and Hemraj. The palm print was made with Hemraj’s blood, but the fingerprints

could not be identified. The sample had been “exhausted,” police said in their report.

On May 18, when the Talwars heard that police had said the murder weapon was not a Nepali

knife but a “surgical” tool, they thought investigators were trying to make the real killer

complacent. But the tone of investigation changed.

“Why was Aarushi reading this book?” police asked. “What mistakes had she made?”

“What’s a sleepover? Did it involve adults?”

“No,” said Nupur. “They didn’t want adults around.”

“Ha. Why not? Why would she not want you there?”

A week after the murders, Rajesh was arrested. TV networks repeatedly showed him being

dragged and pushed into a police car, shouting “Dinesh, they’re framing me.” Next came the

inspector-general’s press conference. After he accused Rajesh of an extra-marital affair,

Gurdarshan Singh said that Rajesh had gone out at around 9:30. “And when he came home at

around 11:30, he found Aarushi and Hemraj in an objectionable, though not compromising,

position.

“Talwar was enraged and took Hemraj to the terrace and hit him on the head with a heavy

weapon and then slit his throat. He then came down to kill Aarushi after having whisky,

locked the terrace and slit his daughter’s throat.” What was unclear was where such a detailed

narrative came from. No evidence was presented.

Journalists tell me the inspector-general — the third in command in the state police force —

took charge at the last minute when he saw the large gathering of media, and that he did not

even know the details of the case or even Aarushi’s name. The character assassination of

Aarushi sparked outrage. Her schoolmates rallied at a candlelit protest in Delhi.

Says her classmate Rajeshwari: “I would associate this sort of behaviour (the alleged

relationship with the much-older Hemraj) with someone who does not get enough attention

maybe in the school or in their life. She had a beautiful relationship with her parents. She had

lots of friends. She had no reason to look for affection elsewhere.”

“A 13-year-old,” Nupur tells me. “They talk about her as if she was 30 years old. The child is

not even there to defend herself. I hope God forgives them for what they’re saying about

her.”

Renuka Chowdhury, then federal minister for women and child development, demanded the

inspector-general be suspended. A month later, the inspector-general was transferred. Two

months after that, he was transferred back. Three years later, he was promoted to additional

director-general.

The day after Rajesh’s arrest, Nupur was interviewed by NDTV, a premier news network. It

would have been Aarushi’s 14th birthday. She remembers sitting at a studio but not much

else. “I was like a zombie,” she says. “I was completely stunned, didn’t know what had struck

us.”

In Bollywood films, when someone dies, a woman invariably lets out a piercing, heart-

wrenching scream. Nupur did not. She spoke coherently and was devoid of emotion. To

viewers, her stony face was damning evidence of guilt. Aarushi had been dead 10 days and

Rajesh arrested for three when Nupur broke out of her emotional paralysis.

Our cousin Smita, a meditation trainer at a spiritual group called the Art of Living , helped

unlock her feelings. “Nupur wasn’t even halfway through the session when the tears came,”

Smita tells me. “She didn’t cry. She howled. It was a tremendous outpouring of pain and grief

and lasted 45 minutes before it subsided into normal tears. I just let her be.”

Rajesh is still grappling with the loss. "It cannot get worse than this," he says. "It's not like

losing your parents. Even if you lose your parents early, it is something you can accept. “This

is something I will not accept till I die.”

Nupur’s father , Group Captain B.G. Chitnis, 80, is a decorated war veteran of the Indian

Air Force. When Nupur was born, my uncle was away fighting the India-Pakistan War of

1965. He recalls rolling into Punjab on the way to Pakistan and the soldiers being hailed as

heroes, being plied with rotis and other food. “There was a sense of nationalism and national

pride. We had hopes of a country that would be united and strong.”

He stands tall, in a black-and-white photo, receiving the Distinguished Service Medal, or a

VSM, in 1980. Today, my uncle is a shell of his former self, his strong voice the only clue to

his once-arresting persona. He and my aunt attend every court proceeding.

He draws strength from his near-death experiences in war. “When you see death is

approaching you . . . that calmness is there. That gives courage to a person, ultimately.”

But he feels betrayed. “Absolutely betrayed. I wish I was not born in this country.”

When it seemed things could not get worse, they did.

For months, media feasted on leaks from unnamed police sources. They were scandalous,

accusing the Talwars of extra-marital affairs, incest, swinger parties, wife-swapping and an

“honour” killing. As the whispers grew louder, the well-to-do professionals morphed into

extravagantly wealthy deviants who, if allowed, would buy their way out of murder.

A prime-time television drama added a plot twist, featuring the murder of a rebellious 16-

year-old girl whose kohl-rimmed eyes were just like Aarushi’s. The murderer, of course, was

the father. But in all the wild reports then, and in the prosecutors’ case today, one claim was

common. That Aarushi and Hemraj had been in her bedroom that night.

There was no evidence of a relationship. There had never been a rumour in the

neighbourhood. Who planted the idea? Krishna Thadarai did. He was an assistant at the

Talwars’ dental clinic. A man in his early 20s. He lived in the same housing complex and was

Hemraj’s friend. Only weeks before the murder, Rajesh had offered to pay for Krishna’s

education. “You study,” Rajesh had said. “I’ll get you work.” But one day before the

murders, Rajesh remembers sharply reprimanding Krishna for ordering an incorrect dental

cast.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI ) was established in 1963. Its initial mandate to

investigate federal government corruption expanded to include murders, kidnappings and

terrorism. A special crimes division was set up in 1987. Today it is the national investigative

agency. On May 31, a week after Rajesh’s arrest and at Nupur’s request, the case was

transferred to the CBI, under Joint-Director Arun Kumar.

Kumar was no stranger to high-profile cases. In 1998, he had been involved in a shootout in

Calcutta that ended with four gangsters killed. In 2005, he led the investigation of

businessman Abdul Karim Telgi in a $3.6-billion counterfeiting scandal.

The crime scene at the Talwars’ home had been so compromised that forensic evidence

seemed a dead end. So Kumar turned to polygraph (lie-detector) and brain-mapping tests and

narco-analysis — administering the so-called truth serum. These tests analyze people in three

states — conscious, semi-conscious and unconscious. Two years later, the Supreme Court of

India would rule them unconstitutional but it would let investigators use these tests for leads.

Rajesh and Nupur took two lie-detector and one brain-mapping tests. None showed evidence

of deception. An expert team recreated sounds in the Talwars’ home with the air conditioners

on. Nothing could be heard in their bedroom. The CBI found no evidence that Hemraj had

been killed in the house. His blood was not in Aarushi’s room or on the Talwars’ clothes.

The agency turned its attention to Krishna. He was the only one who had told state police

Rajesh was having an extra-marital affair and that Hemraj and Aarushi were somehow

involved. As well, after Nupur tried calling Hemraj on the morning after the murder, tracking

technology showed the phone had been in the cluster of flats where the Talwars lived.

Krishna lived there, too.

The CBI gave Krishna polygraph and brain-mapping tests. Investigators searched his house

and took a pillow cover, a blood-stained kukri and trousers. The pillow cover would later

prove to be crucial evidence.

Rajesh was still in jail on July 11, when Arun Kumar held a press conference .

“There was no evidence against (Rajesh) as per the case diaries of (state) police,” he said.

The CBI had found no evidence either.

What he said next was explosive. After being administered truth serum, Krishna had

confessed to the crime and had incriminated two other men — Raj Kumar, a servant, and

Vijay Mandal (a.k.a. Shambhu), a driver in the neighbourhood. According to Arun Kumar,

Krishna had told investigators he arrived at Hemraj’s room late at night and began drinking.

The other two joined them. “They consumed alcohol and discussed Aarushi and entered her

room.

“She got up and tried to scream. She was gagged. She was first hit by a hard, blunt object.

They tried to sexually abuse her. That led to a scuffle. They went to a terrace, and on the

terrace after a lot of struggle, Hemraj was killed. They locked down the terrace, and came

down in the room of Aarushi and then slit her neck.”

All three were arrested. But this drug-induced confession was not enough to charge the men.

The agency was going to pursue other evidence, Kumar said. Rajesh was released on bail

after 50 days in prison. In September, the three men were also released. The bail order said

polygraph, lie-detector and narco-analysis tests showed they were involved in the killings, but

police could find no hard evidence.

One year later, Kumar was removed from the case. The state government simply said his

tenure at the CBI had ended. News reports said a new CBI team would take a “fresh look” at

the case.

Within weeks , the fresh look led to a fresh story.

It started with changes to Aarushi’s post-mortem report . First, the suggestion that her

virginity had been long lost. “Hymen was ruptured and healed (old),” wrote Sunil Dohare, the

same doctor who had conducted the post-mortem 16 months earlier. “On external

examination, the vaginal opening was found prominently wide open.” He did not clarify what

this implied.

The doctor said he omitted these facts in his original report because “the findings were non-

specific and were very strange.” The original report had said “NAD” — nothing abnormal

detected. A crime-scene analysis done for the CBI a month later, in October 2009, concluded

the doctor’s revised post-mortem report indicated the possibility of an honour killing. (In

India, honour killing is a stereotype of the north, including Punjab. Talwar is a Punjabi

surname.)

Dohare retroactively backed this analysis by making another material addition months later.

The wideness of the vaginal opening, he wrote, “indicates possible cleaning of the vaginal

canal.” In other words, an attempt to eliminate any trace of sexual activity. The CBI analysis

also changed the murder weapon that delivered the blunt force. It was now identified as a golf

club, not a kukri , because of the “triangular-shaped head injury.”

This analysis was based on photographs of the crime scene, not the actual crime scene. But it

became the basis for CBI’s final report, which was released in December 2010 and leaked to

Indian media.

The final report was supposed to provide definitive answers. It did not. It suggested both

Nupur and Rajesh were involved in the murders, yet it also sought to close the case. The

report first cleared Krishna and other two servants on such grounds as, “No servants will have

the guts to assemble in a house when the owners are sleeping.” It also said Krishna’s family

provided him an alibi for the night.

As for the Talwars, it said, “A number of circumstances indicate the involvement of the

parents in the crime and the cover up.” It, too, hinted at an honour killing and mentioned the

“surgical cuts” were “the work of professionally trained experts” and suggested one of

Rajesh’s golf clubs had delivered the deadly blows. But the CBI admitted the circumstantial

evidence had “critical and substantial gaps.”

That Hemraj’s blood was not detected on Rajesh and Nupur’s clothes was one. “The absence

of a clear-cut motive” and “non-recovery of one weapon of offence” — the “surgical” tool —

were others. Citing a lack of evidence, investigators sought to close the case. Had the Talwars

not challenged the report, they would be free.

In reviving the theory first floated by Singh — he of the original press conference — the

final CBI report would have saved face, and perhaps careers. The Talwars, like most Indians,

believed the CBI was independent of state police. It is not. It consists of officers drawn from

state police forces across the country. It turned out that all the CBI officers in the Talwars’

case were colleagues of the state police who originally botched the investigation.

In seeking to close the case, the CBI appeared to tempt the Talwars to escape the arduous

justice system. Instead, the Talwars argued the case should not be closed and appealed to a

court set up exclusively for cases investigated by the CBI. The court was in nearby

Ghaziabad, situated amid dirt alleyways, heaps of garbage and decrepit offices with

crumbling walls.

As Rajesh left the courtroom and walked past a throng of television cameras after a hearing in

January 2011, a man lunged at him and slashed his face with a meat cleaver, slicing an artery

and a nerve. When Rajesh held up his hands, the cleaver tore into them, cutting tendons and

breaking one finger. The vigilante, who was overpowered, said he was upset at the slow pace

of the case. As for Rajesh’s appeal, the CBI court disagreed with both him and the CBI. It

ruled there was enough in the report to charge the Talwars with murder.

With the Talwars standing trial, defence lawyers now had access to all the evidence. They

came upon a forensics report dated Nov. 6, 2008, two months after Krishna and the other two

suspects had been released. It analyzed the items taken from Krishna’s room by the first CBI

team, and concluded that the blood on the kukri was from an unidentified animal. The blood

on the pillow cover was Hemraj’s. Here was evidence that directly tied one of the victims to a

man the CBI had originally named a suspect.

The Talwars rushed this document to the High Court. How did the CBI explain it? It said the

lab had made a “typographical error” in identifying the origin of the pillow cover; it came

from Hemraj’s room, not Krishna’s. There were no documents to back this assertion. The

High Court accepted the CBI explanation. That was on March 18, 2011. The CBI next

released a letter from the lab that acknowledged the typo and regretted “the inconvenience

caused.” It was dated March 24, 2011.

The Talwars appealed the CBI court’s order to stand trial at the High Court and lost. They

took it to the Supreme Court. There, the defence argued that the CBI was relying on flawed

evidence to prosecute them. They wanted the huge palm print found on the Talwars’ terrace

and the whisky bottle tested by the Touch DNA test . This test extracts DNA from cells of the

outermost layer of skin left behind after touching a surface. The Supreme Court rejected the

Talwars’ appeal, refusing to order further investigation.

Dinesh Talwar, 51, is an ophthalmologist of repute, but he may as well be a lawyer. For the

past 4 ½ years, he has been a thorn in the prosecution’s side, an aggravating, detail-oriented

engine for the defence, constantly pushing the Talwars’ lawyers to do more, to demand more,

to expect more. He has read each word in every case document — there are thousands of

pages — and has at his fingertips document numbers, dates and details. He is the brother you

want if you’re in trouble.

He has drastically cut his own clinic hours and his income has been halved. But he is driven

by a vow made in 2002 to his dying father. “I promised I’d take care of my little brother,”

says Dinesh. Dinesh’s role is the most visible in the family. Others in the family are trying to

drive social media support. The Facebook group Justice for Aarushi Talwar has 4,000

supporters. The nascent @justice4aarushi handle on Twitter has 300. Friends have started an

online petition for the Talwars to be given a fair trial.

Nupur’s brother, Samir, cut short his own fine life overseas and returned to India,

contributing money for expenses even if it means his own young family has not had a

vacation since 2008. There are monthly expenses, bail money, fees for lawyers at the CBI

court and High Court. Many of the Talwars’ patients have remained loyal even though their

appointments are frequently rescheduled to accommodate court dates. The clinic’s assistant,

the maid and the driver have all stayed by their side.

“If I thought (Rajesh) was guilty, why would I stay?” asks driver Umesh in Hindi. “If a man

can kill his daughter, what could he do to me?” For his loyalty, Umesh was beaten so

severely by a senior CBI investigator that it tore his ear drum. And yet, the lifelong struggle

is for the Talwars alone.

It had been 14 years since I last saw Nupur. When I left India 12 years ago in search of

adventure, Nupur was balancing a career with mothering a 5-year-old. Not in our wildest

imaginations did we foresee the circumstances of our next meeting on Sept 16, 2012. A

murder charge in India usually means a drawn-out battle for bail. Rajesh has been free since

2008, but after the CBI charged them both with murder, Nupur was arrested. That was last

April.

I arrived at Dasna Jail armed with two books for Nupur, a notebook, a pen and a few

questions. Rajesh came with bags of snacks and fresh fruit. A friend of theirs — the woman

Rajesh was accused of having an affair with — sent a Bible for a group prayer that a

Christian jail guard had organized for Nupur. Her bail hearing was to be held at the Supreme

Court the next day.

The jail was built in 1996 for 720 men and women. Its superintendent, Viresh Raj Sharma,

tells me it has 4,200 inmates. Of these, he says, 360 are convicts. That means more than 90

per cent of them are awaiting bail or trial, some for years. A majority of the women are

accused of killing their daughters-in-law for not bringing sufficient dowry, he says.

We waited half an hour, swatting mosquitoes. The whirring fans circulated hot air and the

smell of sweat and body odour. The walls had peeling plaster and dark red stains from the

spit of chewed betel leaves and tobacco. We were fingerprinted and frisked and led into the

meeting room. “Hello, doctor sahib ,” the policemen greeted Rajesh. The Talwars are Dasna

Jail’s most famous inmates.

Two layers of metal grill separate inmates and visitors and we watched as a dozen prisoners

streamed in. The last one stopped in front of us. It took me several seconds to reconcile this

fragile woman to my memory of Nupur. We raised our hands to touch fingers through the

two square inches of metal. She looked at me, began to smile, faltered and burst into tears.

True to form, she quickly recovered.

It’s a lonely place, she told me. “The physical discomforts one learns to live with. It’s the

lack of moral support, of emotional support, not having your family or loved ones around

you, not having anyone to talk to that is difficult. Time really stops. That’s hell. Completely.”

The Supreme Court of India sits on nine hectares in central Delhi. The towering domed

building, made of red and white sandstone, spreads its wings on either side to represent the

scales of justice. Proceedings are held in English. Transcripts are available online.

Case No. 85, Nupur Talwar vs. CBI, pitted some of country’s finest legal minds against each

other over her bail application. For the CBI, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra, a specialist in

criminal law, white-collar crime, extradition and technology. He gave up his private practice

to become additional solicitor-general of India in July.

For Nupur, a battery of lawyers including Harish Salve, a master strategist who was once

solicitor-general. He is considered India’s top defence lawyer. Mukul Rohatgi, a tireless

workhorse, an aggressive defender. These defence lawyers reportedly charge about $55,000

for a full day in court, unaffordable for the Talwars. They are working pro bono.

Key for the defence is the indomitable Rebecca John, also working pro bono, who has been

with the Talwars since Day 1. Her commitment has withstood personal tragedy; within a

week of her own mother’s unrelated murder in 2011, she was in court for the Talwars. “I

have gone the extra mile because I believe if you allow the investigating agencies this kind of

power, then none of us are safe in this country,” says John. “None of us.”

Only two family members are allowed in the court gallery. Rajesh’s cousin Bobby and I were

selected. Rajesh was near Dasna Jail to relay the outcome to Nupur. Her parents stayed home

after extracting many promises from me to call after the hearing. The Supreme Court had

heard Nupur’s bail application previously. CBI prosecutors had argued then that she could

tamper with 13 testimonies, (from a total of 141 witnesses). The court had directed the CBI to

examine those 13 witnesses on priority.

The prosecutor opened by saying the CBI court trial would end in December. What was the

harm in keeping Nupur in prison for a few more months? (It is nowhere close to completion

today.) The defence team said it could take two years to finish examining witnesses in the

CBI hearing, given the current pace. Was it fair to imprison her that long when there was no

evidence of witness tampering — the reason prosecutors wanted her held without bail?

Luthra said two key witnesses were missing, “which we find suspicious.” Who were these

two witnesses? One was a security guard at the housing complex where the Talwars lived.

The other was a domestic help, one of India’s faceless migratory millions, who left her job at

Nupur’s mother’s house three years ago. The judge wrapped it up. Bail is granted, he said. I

called Nupur's parents.

When I tell my cousin's story to non-Indians, the reaction is usually shock and puzzlement.

How can a country have democracy and anarchy in equal measure? How can an IT

powerhouse accept outdated forensics and investigative techniques? The answer is simple.

There are many Indias.

I grew up in one of them. I lived in the same cocoon as Nupur, Rajesh and about 350 million

middle-class Indians — a third of the country. Members of that group enjoy varying degrees

of luxury; we had maids, cooks and drivers. Human rights, sciences and the arts are discussed

within this cocoon. The police operate outside of it. I knew they were not like Law & Order

SVU . I did not expect yellow tape around a crime scene. I did expect police to protect it by at

least shutting doors. It came as a shock an investigative system could fail so badly.

It has been sobering. The birth of my two children in the past five years has made me

consider what I value about where I live. Before Aarushi’s murder, India was a magical place

for me, despite its flaws. Since then, it has become intimidating. I once cherished my pride in

the country. I now grieve the loss of that pride. For the couple in the epicentre of this tragedy,

life has been intolerable. Robbed of a chance to grieve their daughter’s death, Nupur and

Rajesh are despondent and bewildered.

“Even a thing like going to the temple is difficult,” says Rajesh. “People stare, point, talk

among themselves.” The social judgment has made them defensive, withdrawn and inward-

looking. Rajesh was once garrulous. He can now sit quietly for hours, looking blank.

“I just keep wondering, why has it happened to us?” Rajesh says. “What did we do wrong? I

didn’t harm anybody, not even meant any harm to anybody. “We have just no answers.

We’ve gone from Hinduism to spiritualism to Islam to Christianity to everything . . . we’ve

met gurus. Why are we facing this? The only answer we get is it must be your karmas (deeds

from past births that you pay for now).”

The CBI declined to speak with me for this story because the trial is underway. Hearings

have been held twice a week since November. Even under this “fast-track” process, the

defence still expects the case to last at least two years — before any appeals. Nupur’s father,

the old soldier, still has fight in him. “We’ve got to strategize, Nupa,” he tells her, a day after

she was released from jail. “Rest up. We’ll fight them.”

Nupur squares her shoulders. “I feel a little stronger now. I never thought I’d say that five

months ago when I entered (jail). I think our child is giving me the strength. The grief will

always be there. But I’m not going to sit back until I get justice for her and for us. “Society

has really treated her badly, treated us badly. Somewhere this has to end for all of us. It’s not

a matter of us getting vindicated and us sitting back.

“The criminals still roam free. How can we let that happen?” Indian media reports that

Krishna is back in Nepal.

Shree Paradkar grew up in Bangalore, India. She has been a journalist in India, Singapore

and Canada and is a Home Page Editor at www.thestar.com . sparadkar@thestar.ca

There are many photographs to illustrate this story at:

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/01/26/aarushi_talwar_murder_a_look_at_one_of

_indias_most_notorious_cases.html