“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.
Often called contemporary India’s biggest murder mystery, the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case has been extensively covered, written about, filmed and discussed to the point that the facts of the case are hard to distinguish from folklore and hotly-debated beliefs. In this context, the biggest triumph of ‘Arushi — Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ is its objectivity.
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.
“Your Child Dies, The World Ends”
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.
His sentence echoes the constant refrain in the documentary – the lack of ‘performance of grief’ by Rajesh and Nupur Talwar.
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,
When I started out, I felt that everybody cleared believed either the parents did it or not, everyone had an opinion, which was based on assumption and not on facts. I didn’t want to go in with a stance, as filmmakers we wanted to take each piece of evidence and take it to its logical, scientific conclusion. We didn’t know where it would go, where the evidence would take us — it was important for us to be objective.Mayurica Biswas
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.
“I Still Feel Like He’ll Come Back”
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.
Sitting with her teenage son, Khumkala Banjade still holds out hope that her husband will return. She says, “I’ve only heard of his death. It’s all hearsay. If he was unwell or I had seen him die, then I’ll have some closure. There’s an emptiness in everything, how do I say in words?”
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“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.
But importantly, it foregrounds the victims — Aarushi and Hemraj. Apart from Hemraj’s wife, the documentary uses old home videos which show the Talwars goofing off in a game of charades and interviews Fiza Jha, Aarushi’s friend, who describes how Aarushi was a part of a group of friends called “Awesome 4some” to remind us of the adolescent teen and not the spectre of a murder victim.
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.
And fervently wish that you never get murdered in India.
(The documentary will be aired on Channel NewsAsia from 23-26 October at 8.30 pm)
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