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“Beyond Reasonable Doubt.”
The most hard-hitting part of Mayurica Biswas’ four-part documentary on the 2008 Aarushi-Hemraj murder case is the title. A term often used in criminal jurisprudence, the phrase in the documentary becomes an incisive comment on the inefficiency of institutions in India and the pitfalls of personal prejudice.
While the CBI trial court pronounced the Talwars guilty ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ in 2013, similar discussions were taking place in drawing rooms with every person in India being sure – ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ – of who killed 14-year-old Aarushi and Hemraj.
Each 48-minute episode traces the facts of the case, with interviews of CBI investigators, police officers, lawyers, friends, family, experts and journalists associated with the case.
Unlike Meghna Gulzar’s ‘Talvar’ (2015) which took a stance on the Talwars’ guilt, the documentary chooses to let the evidence & the discernible prejudices in the interviews speak for themselves. And what emerges is an indictment of the police, judiciary and media in India.
Javeed Ahmed, former Joint Director of Central Bureau of Investigation says this in the first episode of the four-part series, describing the demeanour of the Talwars after the murder. Shrugging his shoulders, he echoes how he found it to be “difficult” that the Talwars would start making allegations after discovering their murdered daughter.
Everyone with a TV had an opinion on where the guilt lies in the Aarushi-Hemraj murder, which makes reliving the events in the documentary so rewarding.
Speaking to The Quint, Mayurica Biswas, who incidentally helmed an all-women crew, describes the conscious decision to make this documentary by taking “each piece of evidence” as it is. She says,
From the moment of the murder, to the botched-up Noida police investigation, to the turf-wars in the CBI and the trial court proceedings (“It felt like India versus Pakistan”), the camera never relents. It represents all the shades of truth, with each scene compelling you to build a chain of circumstantial evidence, with one link logically leading to another.
In the media frenzy which followed the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case, there was criticism on how the media forgot the hyphenated murder victim, Hemraj. The 45-year-old Nepalese immigrant was the Talwars’ live-in domestic worker and was found murdered on the terrace of their home in Jalvayu Vihar a day after Aarushi’s body was discovered. Initially the villain, his blood-stained body was hastily disposed by the Noida police in a bedsheet, without his immediate family being around.
So, when the documentary shifts to Hemraj’s village in Arghakhanchi in Nepal, the most poignant moment emerges.
“Aarushi — Beyond Reasonable Doubt” does an excellent job of following the evidence to its logical conclusion, even bringing in independent experts on body language, reviewing narcotic test footage and talking to forensic investigators.
More than anything, the double murder of Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj and the wake of tragedy the incident left behind reinforces a “this could be us” moment which makes the documentary infuriating and difficult to watch.
When retired police officer, KK Gautam who found Hemraj’s body after the crime scene was filled with milling crowds, asks, “How did you not notice the bloodstains?” it makes you want to bang the screen in anger.
(The documentary will be aired on Channel NewsAsia from 23-26 October at 8.30 pm)
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