On 12 October, the Allahabad High Court delivered its verdict in the case, acquitting the Talwars of murder charges. This article was first published on 1 October, 2015 and is being republished from The Quint’s archives in light of the verdict.
- AGL Kaul (Chief Investigating Officer, CBI) had skirmishes with the Talwars. It was personal.
- Dr. Dohre who performed the Post Mortem recorded 6 statements with No Abnormalities Detected and then did a u-turn in court.
- The maid, Bharti Mandal, has confessed before the Judge that she was tutored to change her statement in court.
- The forensics in the case have been tampered with at every stage.
- Clinching forensic and DNA evidence against Krishna was dismissed as a typographical error.
The Defence Counsel in the Aarushi Talwar murder case in an interview to The Quint has made stunning claims on why he believes there was a witch hunt against the Talwars by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Investigating officers, particularly AGL Kaul (Chief Investigating Officer, CBI) had a hunch that it has to be the Talwars and the Talwars alone. He started pursuing it and even had skirmishes with the Talwars. It became very personal between Kaul and the Talwars. Kaul’s approach was that dekho aap log admit kar lo ki aapne ye kiya hai and Nupur Talwar would blast him. He would retort saying, aap mujhe jaante nahi hai main kya kar sakta hu. Skirmishes like these.Tanveer Ahmed Mir, Defence Counsel, Rajesh & Nupur Talwar
Mir goes on to say that the CBI case diaries did not report abusive verbal exchanges between the Talwars and Kaul. Mir also believes that how Kaul had dealt with similar cases in the past, should be examined.
Prosecution in Ajit Jogi’s son’s case and the Shehla Masood case are examples. In the Shehla Masood case, selective stories were leaked to the press. Kaul is guilty of intimidating witnesses to provide testimony against Ajit Jogi’s son in an alleged conspiracy to kill a political opponent. When the Sessions Court directed Kaul to give voice samples in the case, he ran like a rat and the court acquitted Jogi.
Mir suggests what made matters worse was that at the Sessions Court the Talwars were up against a Judge who was not known for acquittals.
The Aarushi Talwar murder trial is a classic case in itself where almost all the witnesses have gone from North Pole to South Pole. Shyamlal’s reputation in Ghaziabad was that of a ‘Saza-Lal’. The man is inherently antithetical to an acquittal, he cannot digest one, and he will convict you on zilch evidence.
Judge Shyamlal was unwilling to consider the inconsistencies in the statements given by witnesses during the trial.
Mir believes the judgment hinges on the maid’s testimony and while in the first three statements she maintains she didn’t touch the door of the house when she first went up to it at 6 am on 16 May, 2008, in court she said the door was locked from the inside.
Judge Shyamlal closed the doors on the Talwars on the basis of the testimony of their maid, Bharti Mandal. The conviction comes in the second paragraph of the judgment and the rest is just rhetoric. The maid said in her testimony, “mujhe jo bayan sikhaya gaya maine wohi diya.” She was not my witness; she was a CBI witness so they were the ones who tutored her. The maid’s first statement was recorded on 16 May at 12:00 pm by the Investigating Officer of the Nodia police in which she says I came I rang the bell but I never touched the door. She says this in 3 consecutive statements which Shyamlal ignored.
Mir then goes on to talk about another major U-turn, that of Dr. Sunil Dohre, who conducted Aarushi’s postmortem on 16 May, 2008.
Dohre, who did an external examination of the girl’s genitalia, wrote NAD (No Abnormality Detected), and then he makes an incision to check for internal injury and again wrote NAD. He doesn’t write the position of the hymen. In the court he says that when he did the examination of Aarushi, her vaginal orifice was so wide that he could see even the cervix. This is a biological impossibility.
“From NAD he went to beyond the South Pole. By no stretch of imagination can you ever see the cervix; either a woman has given birth to 30 children or there has been a prolapse. I had a very famous gynaecologist testifying and she was dismissed by the Judge in one single line as being partisan. Dr. Urmil Sharma is a 1960 MRSC England, what better doctor did I need?”
Mir says that Dr. Dohre’s U-turn was just the beginning.
In six statements Dohre maintains that there was no abnormality detected, suddenly after Kaul comes in (to take charge of the investigation) he says that he could see the cervix! I am fighting to restore the lost dignity of a 14-year-old dead girl.
Mir believes all the forensic evidence was tampered with. In November 2008, The Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) said that traces of Hemraj’s blood were found on Krishna’s pillow.
When the Defence pointed this out in March 2011 challenging their summon, CDFD changed their story and said it was a typographical error and that there was no blood found on Krishna’s pillow.
This made the case against the Talwars stronger.
The CBI honchos broke open seals, took out pillow covers changed the tags, took photographs and showed these photographs to Allahabad HC and said it was a typographical error. I had grilled SPR Prasad, the officer from CDFD on the typographical error and he blurted out that he could not prove how he had committed a mistake. In order to fortify the mistake, they couldn’t verify how they had committed the mistake when there is such a systematic process.
Going forward, Mir says that there is an appeal pending with the Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court – judges there, however, are petrified to take up this case.
I have sought the copies of all tapes from Avirook Sen and we are transcribing them. You can’t ask the court to take cognizance of the book. We are developing an application for additional evidence under section 391. We will seek permission to have Avirook Sen testify as an additional witness. We will then ask a division bench to take a perspective of the case.
(With inputs from Shalaka Shinde.)
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