Events preceding the murders

The murders on the night of 15–16 May 2008 were preceded by the following events:^[4][5][6]

Before 9 pm (15 May)

• On 15 May 2008, Nupur Talwar worked at her clinic during 9 am–1 pm. She picked up Aarushi from school at 1:30 pm and returned to their Jalvayu Vihar apartment. Nupur's co-sister Vandana Talwar (wife of Rajesh's brother Dinesh) joined them for lunch. Then Nupur and Vandana left, while Aarushi stayed at home. Nupur worked at the Fortis Hospital from 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm. She returned to the apartment around 7.30 pm.
• Rajesh Talwar taught at the ITS Dental College from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm and then attended patients at the clinic until 8:30 pm.

9 pm – 10 pm

• Rajesh and his driver Umesh Sharma returned to Jalvayu Vihar around 9:30 pm.
• Sharma dropped Rajesh in front of the apartment building and drove away to park the car at the house of Nupur's parents, which was at a walking distance.
• Sharma returned to the Talwar residence around 9:40 pm to hand over the car keys and Rajesh's bag to Hemraj, who had cooked the dinner for the family.
• Sharma saw Nupur and Aarushi near the dining table, and Rajesh coming out of his bedroom. He was the last known outsider to see Aarushi and Hemraj alive.^[7]

10 pm – 11 pm

• According to the Talwars, after the dinner, they went to Aarushi's room, and gave her a Sony DSC-W130 digital camera.^[8] The camera had arrived earlier that day via courier and had been received by Hemraj. Rajesh originally planned to give it to Aarushi on her birthday (24 May), but Nupur persuaded Rajesh to give it to Aarushi that day as an early birthday surprise.
• Aarushi clicked several photographs of herself and her parents, the last one at 10:10 pm.
• Subsequently, Aarushi's parents retired to their room, while Aarushi remained in her room.

11 pm – 12 am

• According to the parents, around 11 pm, Rajesh asked Nupur to switch on the internet router, which was in Aarushi's room. When Nupur came to Aarushi's room, the teenager was reading Chetan Bhagat's The 3 Mistakes of My Life. Nupur switched on the router and returned to her own room.
• Around this time, Rajesh answered a call from the US on the landline phone (kept in the couple's room). This indicates that the ringer was not silent.
• Rajesh then surfed some stock market and dentistry websites, and sent an e-mail.^[9] He visited an e-mail site at 11:41:53 pm, which is when the desktop and the laptop show the last internet usage.^[10]

After 12 am (16 May)

• Around midnight, Aarushi's friend Anmol tried calling her on her mobile as well as the Talwar residence's landline. The calls were not answered. Around 12:30 am, he sent her an SMS message: This message was not received by Aarushi's phone.^[9]
• The Internet router was used for the last time at 12:08 am.^[11] Based on this, CBI inferred that Rajesh was online until 12:08 am.^[12]
• The exact sequence of events between midnight and 6:00 am could not be determined by the investigators with certainty (see conjecture below). According to their post-mortem reports, Aarushi and Hemraj were killed between 12:00 am and 1:00 am.

The apartment

The 1300 sq. ft. apartment had 3 bedrooms(including servants' room), a drawing-dining room and a servants' quarters, where Hemraj slept. Rajesh and Nupur slept in the master bedroom, while Aarushi slept in an adjacent room.^[6] Hemraj's room had a separate entry from outside the apartment; it also opened into the apartment from inside.^[9]

The entrance to the Talwars' apartment at Jalvayu Vihar had three doors: the outermost grill gate, a middle mesh door, and the innermost wooden door. The middle door and the wooden door were attached to the same frame^[13] Hemraj's room had two doors - one door opened inside the apartment, and the other door was located between the two grill doors.^[14] The Talwars had the outermost gate removed a year after the murders.^[15]

The injuries

According to their post-mortem reports, both Aarushi and Hemraj died between 12 am and 1 am.^[34] Both had been first attacked with a heavy blunt weapon, which caused a "U/V-shaped" scar and resulted in their deaths. Then, their throats were slit with a sharp weapon. There was no sign of asphyxia.^[6]

Weapon used for inflicting the blunt injury

A typical golf club (Picture used for representational purpose only)

In May 2008, the forensic scientists stated that Aarushi was first assaulted with "a heavy sharp-edged weapon". The first hit on the forehead resulted in her death within two minutes, as indicated by the blood clot size.^[36]

In 2012, after Aarushi's parents were charged with the murder, the CBI claimed that according to the experts, the "dimensions of the striking distance" of one of Rajesh's golf clubs was identical to the dimensions of the injuries found on the bodies.^[6] Dr. Sunil Dohre testified that the weapon used for the U/V-shaped injuries could possibly be a golf club. The defence argued that the CBI officers had drawn the words "golf club" from Dohre's mouth.^[37] Talwars' lawyer stated that Aarushi had had a hairline fracture, and produced the forensic expert Dr. RK Sharma, who told the court that this fracture could not have been caused by a golf club.^[38]

Weapon used for slitting the throats

A typical kukri (Picture used for representational purpose only)

The weapon used for slitting the throats of the victims was never found. The identical measurements of the lacerated wounds indicated that the same weapon was used on both the victims. In May 2008, the forensic scientists remarked that the wounds displayed a "clinical precision and careful thought", as they were inflicted at the right spot to cut the windpipe and dissect the vital left common carotid artery which supplies oxygenated blood to the brain.^[36] Initially, when the Noida police first suspected the parents, they stated that the weapon used was a "surgical knife". By June 2008, the CBI's suspicion had shifted to the three Nepali men, and the weapon was believed to be a kukri, a type of Nepali knife. ^[39]

The second CBI team returned to the "surgical instrument" theory. In 2013, CBI told the court that according to the faculty at the Talwars' alma mater Maulana Azad Medical College, their dental students were taught surgery. The defence argued that a dentist's scalpel has a cutting surface of about a centimeter: the instrument is too delicate to cut through the carotid artery.^[40] According to the defence witness Dr. RK Sharma, the wounds could have been caused by surgical scalpel No. 10 (not used by dentists) or a kukri.^[41]

Aarushi's room

Aarushi's body lay on her bed, covered with a white flannel blanket. Her face was covered with her schoolbag.^[42]

There was blood on the pillow, the bed, the walls, the floor and the front side of the bedroom door. However, there was no blood on the toys, the schoolbag and the pink pillow kept on the back of the bed. These items were within the range of the splashed blood area, which indicates that they were placed on the bed after the murder. Aarushi's body lay undisturbed on the bed, and the bed sheet was laid out smoothly.^[6][43] According to the CBI, no bloodstains were found on the book The 3 Mistakes of My Life, which Aarushi was supposedly reading before her murder.^[44]

Aarushi's body

The 2008 post-mortem report written by Dr. Sunil Dohre marked Aarushi's genital area as "nothing abnormal detected", thus ruling out a sexual assault, but also noted the presence of a "whitish discharge" at her vagina. The whitish discharge sample was sent for pathological examination at the local district hospital, which reported absence of semen. However, later, in 2009, when this vaginal swab sample was sent to CBI's forensic labs, it was suspected to have been tampered with (see below). Ultimately, the CBI concluded that the sample had got contaminated, but not deliberately tampered with.^[45] Later, gynaecologist Dr. Urmila Sharma testified that the whitish discharge is normal in 13- and 14-year-old girls after the beginning of a menstrual cycle.^[46]

The bed sheet had a wet circular mark below her pelvic area, which was not urine. There was no such wet patch on her pyjamas, which were untied; no urine or any other bodily fluid was found on her underwear either. The lower garments of Aarushi appeared to have been pulled up or pulled down, as her buttock cleavage was visible. CBI suspected that her pelvic area was swabbed clean, and the pyjamas were pulled up afterwards.^[6][43]

Later in 2012, Dr. Dohre stated that Aarushi's private parts were "extraordinarily dilated", although there were no signs of rape.^[9] He stated that her hymen was ruptured and that it had an old tear. He also stated that her vaginal orifice was "unduly large", the mouth of her cervix was visible and the whitish discharge was confined to the vagina, when it should have spread to the "entire area".^[47] Dr. Dohre stated that he had not mentioned these observations in his original report, because these were his "subjective findings", and because "the findings were non-specific and were very strange".^[32][48] He added the wide vaginal opening found on Aarushi's body could have resulted only when someone manipulated it while the rigor mortis was setting in. He thus concluded that Aarushi's private parts appeared to have been cleaned after she died.^[37]

Hemraj's body and the terrace

Hemraj's body had been dragged at least 20 feet on the terrace after his death, as evident by a blood trail and abrasion-contusion on his elbows.^[49][50]

The body was lying on the left of the roof entrance near the external unit of the air conditioner (AC), and was covered by a panel from the roof cooler. The body appeared to have been dragged towards to AC unit, as the quantity of blood was more near the AC unit. An expert from FSL Gandhinagar as well as a team of experts from CFSL concluded that the drag mark on the roof resulted from a blood-soaked body being dragged after being kept in a bed sheet.^[6] This raised suspicion that Hemraj might have been killed somewhere else, and his body dragged to the terrace in order to hide it. However, in June 2008, CBI's UV Light testing team reported that it didn't find Hemraj's bloodstains anywhere except the terrace. So, unless the killer cleaned up the original murder spot, Hemraj seems to have been killed on the terrace. The blood found on the staircase leading to the terrace on 17 May might have come from the mattress that the cleaners were trying to dump on the terrace.^[18]

A double-bed cover was draped upon the iron grill that separated the Talwars' terrace from the neighbouring terrace. The investigators found a smudged blood-stained palm print on the terrace wall. The blood was later identified as that of Hemraj, but the print could not be identified.^[26] The police also photographed a blood-stained shoe print on the terrace; the shoe size was 8 or 9.^[51]

According to the Talwars' lawyer Pinaki Mishra, those who had found Hemraj's body saw hair in his mouth, possibly that of his killer. However, the police did not check this.^[52]

Unlike Aarushi's body, which had undigested food in the stomach, Hemraj had just 25 ml of liquid in his stomach, indicating that he did not have dinner.^[53] This evidence was also supported by the fact that his dinner was found untouched in the kitchen on the morning of 16 May.^[54]

In 2012, during proceedings against Aarushi's parents as suspects, Dr. Naresh Raj told the court that Hemraj's penis was swollen when his body was brought for autopsy. According to him, this meant that he was either in middle of a sexual intercourse, or was about to have one. The defence lawyer cited a medical book which stated that this swelling of penis after death was normal. In response, the doctor stated that his conclusion was not based on any medical authority, but on experiences from his own married life.^[55]

Hemraj's room

On 1 July 2008, the first CBI team recorded a statement by KK Gautam, describing Hemraj's room as he found it on 17 May. According to this statement, Gautam saw three glasses, two of which had some quantity of liquor in them, while the third one was empty. He also found three bottles: Kingfisher beer, a Sprite and Sula whisky.^[56] Later, DNA of Hemraj was found on the Kingfisher bottle,^[57] although according to CBI's investigators, he was a teetotaler.^[58]

Gautam also visited the servant's toilet where he "found urine of more than one person".^[59] According to the statement, he also saw a depression on Hemraj's mattress pointing to the presence of three people in his room. However, in 2012, Gautam told the court that there was no liquor in any of the glasses. He also stated that he had not suggested presence of three people in the room, based on the state of the mattress. When questioned about the discrepancies, he stated that the investigating officer should be asked why his statements were not recorded correctly.^[60] He stated that an officer from the first CBI team "distorted several things he said, added things he did not say, and produced a statement that suited the line of investigation at the time."^[25]

The doors and the keys

There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, and the middle grill door had been found latched from the outside in the morning. There were two known sets of keys to the house entrance. One set was with the Talwars, and another with Hemraj. Nupur threw down one bunch of keys to the maid on the morning of 16 May. According to the CBI, Nupur had taken these keys from Hemraj's room. According to Nupur, Hemraj's keys would usually be kept on the sideboard, but she couldn't find them on that morning; so, she threw down her own keys to the maid. The question whether this key was that of Nupur or Hemraj was initially relevant to the investigation, as there were reports that the middle grill door had been locked from outside with a key (If both the keys were inside and CBI was right, it could mean that the parents locked the door, then went inside their apartment through Hemraj's door which they locked from inside, in order to mislead the investigators). However, later, the maid Bharati's testimony in the court established that the door was merely latched from outside. Thus, if the killers were not the parents, they could have shut the innermost wooden door (which automatically locked when shut), and then latched the middle grill door from outside.^[5]

When the maid, Bharati, visited the house on the morning of 16 May, she tried to push the outermost gate but could not open it. When she came back at the gate after collecting the bunch of keys (which Nupur had thrown down), she could open it by pushing it.^[17] The CBI theorized that the gate was originally latched from inside: when Bharati went down to fetch the keys, Nupur came to the passage via Hemraj's room, and unlatched it.^[61] In September 2012, the defence claimed that the maid Bharati Mandal was a tutored witness, as she told the court Jo samjhaya gaya wahi bayan de rahi hu ("I am saying whatever I was explained.") However, Bharati denied that she had given any incorrect statement under CBI's pressure.^[62] The defence stated that this door was not closed, and presented Rajesh's driver Umesh Sharma as a witness, who stated that this outermost door could be opened by pushing it hard.^[63]

The key to the terrace door was never found. According to the Talwars, this key was present in Hemraj's bunch of keys, which went missing after the murders.^[64]

The door to Aarushi's room (and the main door of the house) would lock automatically when shut. Aarushi's door could either be opened from inside, or from outside with a key. Usually, her room would be locked at the night, and its keys would be at Nupur's bedside. There was no sign of forced entry in Aarushi's room. On the morning of 16 May, the key was found in its shoe-shaped key ring, on top of a framed wall sculpture near the house entrance, in the living room. Nupur later told police that she was not sure whether she closed Aarushi's door the last time she entered the room at 11:00 pm, and if she did, she might have let the keys hanging in the key slot. She claims to have stated this in several lie detector, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests that she cleared.^[5][9] In 2013, the SP Mahesh Kumar Mishra told the court that, on 16 May 2008, Rajesh Talwar claimed that he had locked Aarushi's room from outside at 11:30 pm on the previous night. Rajesh also told him that he had forgotten to lock his own bedroom door from inside, and someone could have stolen the key to Aarushi's room from his room.^[28]

Phone records

Both Aarushi and Hemraj had mobile phones, but both the phones had disappeared after the murder.

Hemraj

Hemraj used a Tata Indicom mobile with the electronic serial number #20CFA3EC.^[65] The SIM card was registered in name of Rajesh.^[1] On 15 May, Hemraj had received two calls from the Talwars' clinic: the first call at 4:58 pm lasted for 10 minutes, and the second call at 5:37 pm lasted for 2+1⁄2 minutes. Rajesh was working in his Hauz Khas clinic at the time, while Nupur was in another area of Noida (Fortis Hospital), as indicated by her mobile phone records. The Talwars' defence lawyer later claimed that Krishna Thadarai was working in the Noida clinic at that time.^[57]

The last call made to Hemraj during his lifetime was at 8:27 pm, and it lasted for 6 minutes. The call had been made from a PCO in Sector 31; the PCO was located a kilometer away from the Talwars' apartment.^[51][66] The investigators were unable to determine who made this call.

The phone records confirmed that Nupur called Hemraj's phone from the Talwars' landline at 6.01 a.m. on 16 May. The call was picked up, but disconnected after two seconds.^[1] This call was the last received on the phone, which was somewhere in the coverage area of the Nithari village cell tower 1362/254. The cell tower had a radius of around 1 km, and covered the apartment complex in which the Talwars (and Thadarai) lived.^[67][68] The police therefore suspected that the killer was present inside the house or in its vicinity on the morning of 16 May.^[1]

Hemraj's phone was never found, but according to the CBI, the number was briefly active in Punjab.^[68]

Aarushi

Aarushi used a gloss black Nokia N72.^[65] She would usually chat with her friends on phone until past midnight. However, on the night of 15 May, her mobile phone was inactive after 9:10 pm. According to the investigators, some of her friends had tried to contact her, but found her mobile phone switched off.^[6] The police suspected that either the battery of Aarushi's mobile phone had died or it had been confiscated by this time.^[69]

Around midnight, Aarushi's friend Anmol tried calling Aarushi on her mobile and then on the family's landline, but there was no response. Anmol sent an SMS message to her mobile phone at around half-past-midnight. According to the phone records, this SMS was not received by Aarushi's phone.^[9]

A few days after her death, Aarushi's phone was found on a dirt track by a housemaid named Kusum, near Noida's Sadarpur area. The phone was possessed by her brother Ram Bhool since May 2008, but he started using it only in February 2009, when he bought a new SIM card. He used it intermittently; on 12 September 2009, the police traced the phone to his residence in Bulandshahar, and recovered the phone from one Jitender whom he had just sold the phone to. Kusum and Ram Bhool were taken into custody for questioning, but the CBI determined that they had no role in the murders: they were not aware that the phone belonged to Aarushi, and had no mala fide intention in keeping it. The police did not find a data card, pictures or text messages on the recovered phone.^[70]

Family's landline

The family's landline phone was kept in the bedroom of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar.^[6] According to the investigators, Anmol called the landline phone around 11:30 pm, and the call lasted 34 seconds. However, Rajesh denied any knowledge about such a call.^[69] Anmol also dialed the family's landline number around midnight, after having failed to reach Aarushi on her mobile: there was no response. The Talwars say that Aarushi would sometimes turn off the ringer on the landline at night, and she might have done it on that night too.^[5]

The neighbour Puneesh Tandon later told the court that when he visited the Talwar residence on the morning of 16 May, he asked Nupur's father if he had called the police. Nupur's father told him that the landline was out-of-order.^[19]

Rajesh

Rajesh's mobile phone records do not indicate anything out of the ordinary. The tower location indicates that he was at his residence.^[6] He had exchanged 16 calls with his fellow practitioner Anita Durrani until 8 pm. At 9:50 pm, he called the Impressionzz traders in Mumbai, from whom he had ordered Aarushi's camera through Indiatimes shopping, probably to ask about a camera feature. At 10.04 pm, he received a call from the father of a patient, who had an appointment on the next day. At 10:06, he called Dr. Mridul Seth to consult on a surgery scheduled on the next day. At 10:15, he received a call from Vikas Sethi, an employee at his Hauz Khas clinic. At 10:38, he received a call from a UAE number. At 10:54 pm and 11:01 pm, he made calls to the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, Chicago. The next call from his mobile was at 6:19 am on the next day, after the discovery of Aarushi's body.^[8]

Nupur

Nupur's mobile phone was switched off from 7:40 pm on 15 May to 1 pm on 18 May. The call records showed that it had not been switched off even once during 60 days preceding the murder.^[1]

Claims of threat to Hemraj's life

According to the police, Hemraj had told some of his friends about a threat to his life.^[71] Although Hemraj's son-in-law Jeevan denied any knowledge of such a threat,^[72] a social worker Usha Thakur confirmed that five days before his murder, Hemraj had told her that he feared for "his life and that of some of his near and dear ones".^[73][74] Later, she told the investigators that she could not do anything for him that day, since she had rush to Bangalore due to a family emergency.^[75]

Nearly three years after the murder, in March 2011, Hemraj's wife Khumkala, a resident of Nepal, came to India. She moved a plea at the CBI court in Ghaziabad, alleging that she suspected the Talwars to be the murderers. She stated that Hemraj treated Aarushi like his own daughter, but had strained relations with Rajesh. She claimed when Hemraj visited Nepal in December 2007, he had described Rajesh as a short-tempered person who rebuked him for trivial things and even chased him to beat him up. She also claimed that Hemraj had called her from a PCO 15 days before his murder: He told her that Rajesh and Nupur suspected him of leaking their family secrets. When Rajesh's brother Dinesh visited their house, he also looked upon Hemraj with suspicion. The three threatened to kill him, if he dared leak the family's private information to the outsiders.^[76] According to her, Hemraj was frustrated with the Talwars' behaviour and was searching for a new job.^[77] Hemraj's wife also claimed that Hemraj had not sent any money back home since December 2007, and had told her that he had kept the money with the Talwars. But the Talwars did not send her Hemraj's dues after his murder.^[78] When asked why she had not made these revelations earlier, she stated that she had faith in India's judiciary until that point; her lawyer stated that she came from a poor family and had little awareness.^[76]

Other evidence

• Hemraj had apparently served himself dinner in a plate around 10:30 pm, but never ate it. His bed was still tidy in the morning, indicating that he didn't go to sleep on that night.^[5]
• A Ballantine's Scotch whisky bottle with bloodstains was found on the dining table. The bloodstains were confirmed as that of Aarushi and Hemraj by a DNA expert.^[79] The Scotch whisky bottle came from a mini-bar concealed behind a wooden panel, so it appears that the person who took it out knew the house well. The bottle was seized on the morning of 16 May, but no clear fingerprints could be recovered from it.^[43]
• Constable Chunnilal Gautam took the first photographs of the crime scene and collected fingerprints on 16 May.^[80] The police had gathered 26 fingerprints from the crime scene. According to a CBI official, 24 of these were gathered through wrong methods and could not be preserved. Only 2 fingerprints were suitable for evidential purposes, but these did not match with any of the suspects.^[81] Chunni Lal did not take fingerprints of Aarushi.^[82]
• Aarushi's camera had photographs numbered 13, 15, 20, 22 and 23: this indicates that at least 23 photographs had been taken using the camera, out of which 18 had been deleted. The CBI considered the possibility of the photographs having been deleted by someone other than Aarushi.^[83] Nupur suggested a simpler explanation: Aarushi took several pictures, and deleted the ones she didn't like.^[84]
• At around 3:43 am, nearly 3 hours after Aarushi's murder, the Internet router in Aarushi's room switched off. The CBI produced a technical expert from CERT-In who stated that the switching on/off of the router after a long gap can only happen due to either a power cut or manual intervention. There was no power cut on the night of the murders, a fact attested to by the electricity department.^[85] The router was next switched on at 6.01 am. However, the router switched on and off a number of times with long gaps throughout 16 May, even when the police and the visitors were present in the apartment. The CBI concluded that such unexplained router activity made this piece of evidence unreliable.^[86]

Parents' defense

Rajesh claimed that he was being framed by the police to cover up their own botched-up investigation. The case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on 31 May at the request of Aarushi's parents. In June, CBI started investigating the case under the Joint-Director Arun Kumar IPS.

The Talwars provided counter-arguments for the points that had made them the prime suspects:^[5][9][18]

Sleeping through the murders

The Talwars stated that they slept through the murders because of the noise produced by two air conditioners on the hot night. The couple's room had a window AC, and Aarushi's room had a split AC; both were switched on the night of 15 May.^[6] In addition, their bedroom was shut. Aarushi is also believed to have had a throat infection, due to which she could not have screamed aloud.^[104] In 2013, the defence witness and forensic expert Dr. RK Sharma stated that a 14-year-old child would have fallen unconscious immediately due to the first blow from the blunt weapon, and would not have been able to scream for help. He based this statement on an analysis of the injuries on Aarushi's body.^[41] A sound expert team later recreated the air conditioners' noise in the house on CBI's invitation. The team concluded that it was possible that the Talwars' could not hear the sounds outside their room, and thus, could have slept through the activities in their house on that night.

Murder of Aarushi and Hemraj in a fit of anger on finding them together

The later evidence suggested that the killers did not drag Hemraj's body to the terrace to hide it: he was killed on the terrace, which nullifies the theory that Rajesh killed him when he saw him in Aarushi's room.

Rajesh's driver Sharma testified that the clothes worn by Rajesh on the morning of 16 May were the same as the ones he saw him wearing the previous night when he came to return the keys. His description of Rajesh's clothes matched that of the maid Bharati, who told the court that Rajesh was wearing a red T-shirt and a half trouser, while Nupur was wearing a blue maxi gown.^[16][105] There was only Aarushi's blood on Rajesh's clothes, but no blood of Hemraj could be traced on these clothes. There was no blood on the clothes that Nupur was seen wearing in the photographs taken by Aarushi on the night before.^[12] This implied that the parents could not have committed the murders under sudden provocation, as speculated by the police.^[5][106]

The parents also pointed out that they would not partake in something like honor killing, as they came from liberal educated families and had an inter-caste marriage.^[107]

Undue haste in cremation and cleaning

The parents denied that they had dressed up the crime scene, pointing out that if they wanted to do so, they would have not left the Scotch whisky bottle with bloodstains in the living room for everyone to see. The family denied that they had shown any haste in cleaning the crime scene or cremating Aarushi's body. Nupur's mother Lata Chitnis and their clinic manager Vikas Sethi stated they received permission from the police to clean the house. The police had told them that they had already collected all the necessary evidence, including a part of Aarushi's mattress. It was the police who suggested that Aarushi's mattress be taken to the terrace for now, given the media clamor downstairs. Vikas found the terrace locked, and when he could not find the key, he placed the mattress on the neighbouring terrace. The family also claimed that the police confirmed that they wouldn't need the body for any further analysis, since the post-mortem had already been done. Since it was decomposing fast, they cremated it.

Access to Aarushi's room

Nupur explained the killer's force-free entry into Aarushi's room by stating that she might have left the key hanging at the door lock, when she arrived to switch on the Internet router.

Extra-marital affair

The Talwars and the Durranis denied that Rajesh and Anita were engaged in an extramarital affair. According to them, the two couples had close ties, because they shared dental clinics and both were nuclear families with teenage daughters.^[52]

Other^[5][18]

• The fingerprints of the parents were not found on the Scotch whisky bottle or the blood-stained clothes of the victims.^[6]
• Rajesh stated that he urged the police to pursue Hemraj, because being missing, he was the obvious suspect.
• Rajesh also claimed that he had no recollection of the police asking him for the keys to the terrace door.
• He could not recognize Hemraj's body as it was highly decomposed. He also claimed that he noticed that the T-shirt on the body read "New York"; the police had told him that the person was wearing a kada (a bracelet). He went down to ask Nupur (who was sitting in the car) whether Hemraj had worn these two items. When Nupur confirmed that he did, Rajesh called Dinesh to say that the body was most likely that of Hemraj.
• Dinesh denied asking KK Gautam to use his influence to change the post-mortem report. He claimed that CBI could not find any records of him making calls at the post-mortem house.
• The crime scene had been compromised, so CBI turned to polygraph test (lie-detector), brain-mapping tests and narco-analysis. Rajesh and Nupur cleared two lie-detector tests and a brain-mapping test, which did not find any evidence of lying on their part.
• The Talwars' relatives and friends state that the parents displayed adequate signs of grief. Nupur's father BG Chitnis reported that "Rajesh had become hysterical and was banging his head against the wall." Radhika Chada, a family friend, stated that Nupur was in "complete shock". Masooma Ranalvi, mother of Aarushi's friend Fiza, said that Rajesh and Nupur were "numb with grief".^[54]
• The size of the shoeprint found on the terrace was 8 or 9, while Rajesh's shoe size is 6.^[51]

Defence of Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal

Alibis

• Thadarai's family members and his landlord KN Johri stated that he was at his house (L-14, Sector 25^[118]) on the night of 15 May.^[85]
• Vijay Mandal's employer and Talwars' neighbour Puneesh Tandon told investigators that his servant was in his garage (L-28, Sector 25).^[85]
• Rajkumar's employer Anita Durrani stated that he was present in her house (35-A, Kanchanjanga Apartment, Sector 35^[118]) at least until 12.30 am.^[85] Rajkumar stated that he had gone to the New Delhi Railway station with his employer Praful Durrani to receive Anita Durrani: they had returned home at 11:30 pm, had dinner and everybody slept around 12:30 am (the Durranis say that Rajkumar's bathroom was outside the house's main back door, and he had the key, so he could go outside anytime he wished).^[5][9] The time needed to reach the Talwars' apartment from the Durranis' house by bicycle is about 20 minutes.^[119] The watchman at the gate of the society where Rajkumar lived did not see him leaving the place on that night.^[6]
• Jalvayu Vihar's six security guards - Virender Singh, Sanjay Singh, Ram Kumar, Chandra Bhushan, Devender Singh and Ram Vishal - stated that they had not seen anyone visiting or leaving the Talwars' house (L-32, Sector 25) that night.^[85] However, CBI also noted that the guards were mobile during the night, and their statements cannot be considered foolproof.^[12] The complex has 1886 apartments and houses nearly 10,000 people. Virender Singh, who was at the main gate, stated that there were several ways of getting in and out of the complex without encountering him.^[120]

Confessions in the Narco tests

• Narco tests are not reliable, and are considered inadmissible as evidence.^[121] The Narco report of Thadarai and Rajkumar stated that Aarushi's mobile phone was sent to Nepal. However, it was recovered from India in September 2009 (having been discovered by a maid in 2008). This further highlighted the unreliability of the narco tests.^[122]
• Rajkumar's lawyer Naresh Yadav approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), stating that the three men had been tortured by the CBI officers during the investigation. As evidence, he submitted video recordings of tests that allegedly showed the CBI officers "putting words in their mouth and torturing them to confess to the murders."^[123] Nepali organizations such as Mool Pravah Akhil Bharat Nepali Ekta Samaj and Rastriya Janamorcha also alleged that CBI was pressurizing the poor men to make confessional statements, in order to protect the Talwars.^[87][124]
• In 2015, a 58.55-minute-long video of Thadarai's Narco test was leaked on YouTube; CBI had only a 45-minute video in its records. The leaked video shows Thadarai saying that he had not committed any crime, and that the IG (Inspector General Arun Kumar) had asked him to confess to the murders. Kumar claimed that the "original" footage did not have this portion.^[125]
• According to the CBI officials, Thadarai had confessed to the crime, but changed his statements several times.^[126]
• Vijay Mandal had not been mentioned in the test, and "Shambhu" being his alias was CBI's conjecture. On 31 July, the TV channel Aaj Tak alleged that Vijay Mandal had been drilled with leading information, prior to his narco-analysis tests. It also alleged that his apparent confessions during the tests had many gaps.^[87]

Other

• No DNA or fingerprints belonging to the three men could be identified from the items seized in the Talwars' house.^[6] On 17 June 2008, SK Singla, a serologist at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) Delhi, said he could not identify any human blood on the kukri recovered from Thadarai's room. The kukri was then sent to the CFSL DNA expert BK Mahapatra, who said he could not extract any DNA from the weapon.^[119]
• CBI could not find any hard evidence of any physical or phone-based interaction between Thadarai, Rajkumar, Mandal and Hemraj on that day. Besides, Rajkumar and Mandal did not try to abscond even after Thadarai was arrested.^[6]
• On 6 November 2008, a report from CDFD Hyderabad stated that the blood marks on the pillow recovered from Thadarai's residence matched Hemraj's blood. Nobody in the CBI team, including Arun Kumar or the investigating officer MS Phartiyal noticed this. When the Talwars' defence lawyers noticed this in 2011, the CBI stated that there was an error in the report: the pillow in the question was the one recovered from Hemraj's room, not from Thadarai's residence. The lab acknowledged CBI's claim.^[18][119]

On 9 August 2008, the CBI director Ashwani Kumar stated that the case remained unsolved, but also added that Rajesh Talwar should be exonerated.^[87] The three men were released in September, after the police could not find any hard evidence against them.^[18] Immediately after his release, Vijay Mandal alleged that the CBI had used physical force and threats against him, and at times, praised him to coax him into turning an approver against Thadarai and Rajkumar. He insisted that the charges against all three of them were false and an attempt to frame them. He also stated that he did not know Rajkumar at all, and that the CBI "trapped" him into saying something wrong when he was semi-conscious.^[127]

Alleged tampering of Aarushi's sample

In September 2009, it was reported that Aarushi Talwar's vaginal swab sample had been tampered with. The sample had been collected by Dr. Sunil Dohre during her post-mortem, and sent to the Gautam Budh Nagar district hospital. The hospital's medico-legal register, which contained the information about Aarushi's sample, went missing in 2008.^[128] Pathologist Dr. Ritcha Saxena (the wife of Dr. Naresh Raj, who conducted Hemraj's post-mortem) performed the procedure of converting the swabs into slides and conducted the vaginal swab test.^[45] According to her, when the sample arrived at the hospital, it was collected by her lab technicians Vikas and Navneet.^[129]

Ritcha Saxena's tests established no semen was present in the sample. The slides were then kept into a steel almirah in the hospital's laboratory. On 1 June 2008, CBI contacted Ritcha over phone requesting access to the sample. Ritcha, who was in Patna at the time, guided the CBI team to her lab over the phone. According to her, the slide was handed over to the CBI by the Chief Medical Superintendent S C Singhal in her absence. Singhal and Ritcha had been involved in a dispute over her transfer: Ritcha had been transferred in 2008, but she neither took up her new post nor resigned. Singhal thus considered her as officially on leave at the time she prepared Aarushi's slides. Ritcha alleged that Singhal had deliberately taken all her registers away to mark her absent, although she regularly came to the hospital every day.^[129]

The CBI later sent the sample to their own CFSL lab in Delhi, where Dr. BK Mohapatra found it to be a mix of two vaginal samples, one of which was Aarushi's. The CBI then sent the sample for further testing to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in Hyderabad. The CDFD stated that the sample largely contained DNA of a person other than Aarushi.^[130] Initially, the CBI considered the possibility of a conspiracy to destroy the evidence that Aarushi might have been sexually assaulted or had consensual intercourse prior to her death.^[131]

Dr. Ritcha Saxena was suspected of tampering with the samples. Her involvement came under scrutiny, because she personally knew Aarushi's mother Nupur Talwar.^[132] Ritcha denied that Nupur Talwar tried to influence the results of her tests in any way.^[133] She also stated that she knew Nupur only to some extent: her son had been treated by Nupur at the Fortis hospital several years before, and her daughter was Aarushi's junior at the Delhi Public School. She claimed that when she tested Aarushi's swab, she did not know that the subject was Nupur's daughter.^[129]

The Talwars were questioned about the tampering allegations during their lie-detector and brain-mapping tests, but were cleared. The CBI also questioned Ritcha, searched her labs and retrieved over a dozen vaginal swab slides. These slides were sent to Hyderabad for testing, but none matched the unidentified DNA traced in Aarushi's slide. The CBI ultimately concluded that the original sample was that of Aarushi, but it had become contaminated.^[130] It dismissed the entire episode as a genuine mistake and not a cover-up.^[134] In an unrelated development, Ritcha was later fired for absenteeism as she had not reported to her new post.^[135]

New CBI team

In July 2008, the Uttar Pradesh government had announced Arun Kumar's (1985 batch IPS officer) recall to the UP cadre. At that time, the UP government had clarified that the recall had no connection with the Aarushi case.^[136] Arun Kumar's tenure at CBI ended in September 2009. The media had accused him of not investigating the alleged tampering scandal, and speculated that this scandal had resulted in him being taken off the case.^[45][137]

In September 2009, the case was transferred to a new CBI team headed by SP Neelabh Kishore.^[138] Additional SP AGL Kaul served as the investigating officer.

Parents suspected again

Apart from the reasons that had made the parents the prime suspects earlier, the new CBI team came up with some additional points. The CBI questioned the doctors who had conducted the postmortem on Aarushi's body. Both Dr. Sunil Dohre and Dr. Naresh Raj made new statements (see the Evidence section above). Dr. Dohre stated that Aarushi's hymen was ruptured, and her private parts appeared to have been cleaned.^[47] Dr. Naresh Raj stated that Hemraj's swollen private part indicated the possibility of sexual intercourse.^[55] In October 2009, a crime-scene analysis was done for CBI based on the photographs of the scene. This analysis supported the conjecture that the crime scene had been dressed-up after the murders.^[9]

Dr. Sunil Dohre later told the court that before the autopsy began, Dinesh Talwar gave him a phone and asked him to talk to "Dr. Dogra". Dohre was under the impression that the person on the line was AIIMS Forensics head Dr. TD Dogra. The person asked him to take blood samples among other samples, and Dohre replied that he would do whatever he felt was required. Later, it was found out that the Dr. Dogra of AIIMS did not talk to Dohre.^[139] The CBI inferred that Dinesh was trying to influence the report, but the defence argued that asking someone to take blood samples cannot be considered as such an attempt.^[140]

The new CBI team identified the weapon used for the initial blow as a golf club because of the "triangular-shaped head injury". The CBI suspected that the weapon used to deliver the blow was one of Rajesh's golf clubs. Rajesh was an amateur and infrequent golf player. His neighbour Puneesh Tandon had given him a golf bag 8–9 years back.^[19] On 29 October 2009, after the Talwars had moved away from their Noida house, the CBI asked them to send Rajesh's golf set to them. Rajesh complied the next day, handing over the golf set consisting of 3 woods (No. 1, 3 and 5), 7 irons (No. 3-9) and a putter. The CBI later stated that the dimensions of the striking surface of the golf club bearing No. 5 were identical to the dimensions of the injuries on the heads of the victims.^[141] No blood, DNA or any other biological fluid could be recovered from the golf clubs.^[142] A CFSL expert stated that two particular golf clubs marked as Exhibit 3 (the 5-wood) and Exhibit 5 (the 4-iron) "appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned so much so that they were visibly distinct" from the other golf clubs.^[143] The CBI suggested that these clubs might have been cleaned to hide their use in the murders. According to Rajesh, the golf clubs bearing No. 4 and No. 5 were originally placed in his car. When the car was sent for servicing (before the murders), the driver Umesh Sharma placed them in Hemraj's room. This event was confirmed by Sharma. Rajesh also says that he never tried to hide these clubs: they were always in plain sight of the investigators, and when he had moved to Delhi, all his belongings, including the golf clubs, were packed under the supervision of a CBI inspector.^[5][119] However, the CBI stated that in the photographs of Hemraj's room, taken by CFSL on 1 June 2008, only one golf club is visible and the other is missing. Rajesh also stated that his friend Ajay Chadda and his wife Nupur had found a golf club in the loft of their residence, when the loft was being cleaned a year after the murders. However, they did not inform CBI for over a year. This information was confirmed by Chadda.^[6] The defence pointed out that this is irrelevant to the case: the golf set had two clubs numbered 5 - the iron found in the loft, and the one that the CBI suspected to be the murder weapon, which was a wood.^[143]

Nilabh Kishore questioned the Talwars at his Dehradun office on 18–19 May 2010. A few days later, on 24 May (Aarushi's birthday), a story in The Pioneer implied that Aarushi had been murdered by Rajesh in an honor killing, quoting unnamed sources in the CBI. On 21 July, Rajesh Talwar asked the court to pass a restraint order against the "unethical and misleading information" being published by the print media outlets.^[87] When the Court issued a show cause notice to The Pioneer, Nilabh Kishore issued an affidavit on 4 October 2010 stating that "no authorised person in the CBI" had spoken to The Pioneer's correspondent, and that the article was full of "factual infirmities and conjectures".^[5]

CBI's closure report

On 29 December 2010, CBI filed a closure report, naming Rajesh Talwar as the sole suspect. The report is summarized below:^[6]

The CBI officer AGL Kaul later revealed that he wanted to file a chargesheet against the parents for the murders, but his superiors Nilabh Kishore and Javed Ahmed decided to file a closure report due to insufficient evidence.^[144] Arun Kumar of the first CBI team was consulted before filing the closure report, and he stated that there was no evidence that linked the Talwars to the murder.^[145] The Talwars' relatives and their supporters alleged that all the CBI officers investigating the case were colleagues of the state police who botched the original investigation.^[5]

Since the report named Rajesh Talwar as a suspect, the Talwars criticized CBI for making "false and baseless" allegations against them; Nupur lamented that the CBI had condemned them for life. On 24 January 2011, a 29-year-old self-proclaimed vigilante Utsav Sharma assaulted Rajesh Talwar with a meat cleaver in front of the court. Rajesh suffered deep cuts on his hands and the right side of his face. Sharma, who claimed to be upset at the slow pace of the case, had previously attacked former police chief S.P.S. Rathore of the Ruchika Girhotra Case.^[146] Nupur accused the CBI of "unleashing mob" on her family, and criticized the media commentary on the case.^[147]

On 30 January 2011, people gathered at Jantar Mantar demanding justice for Aarushi. The protest was attended by activists including those from the Middle Finger Protests group who held banners that read, "CBI - Congress Bureau of Injustice" and "CBI - Congress Bureau of Investigation".^[148][149]

Court verdict

On 25 November 2013, a special CBI court held Rajesh and Nupur Talwar guilty for the two murders. The Special Judge Shyam Lal convicted the couple for murder, destruction of evidence, misleading the probe and filing a wrong FIR.^[167] On 26 November 2013, they were sentenced to life imprisonment for the twin murders.^[168]

The Talwar family called the verdict a miscarriage of justice, and alleged that the points proving innocence of Rajesh and Nupur^[169] were not produced by the CBI before the court.^[170] Journalist Avirook Sen alleged that the judge wrote the case verdict even before the defence side finished their arguments.^[171] In January 2014, the Talwars challenged the decision in the Allahabad High Court.^[172]

On 12 October 2017, the High Court acquitted the Talwars of all charges, stating that the evidence presented by the CBI against the Talwars was not satisfactory beyond reasonable doubt, and therefore they must be given benefit of the doubt instead of being convicted based solely on suspicion.^[173] The High Court castigated the CBI for its theory on the murder of domestic help Hemraj in the Aarushi murder case, saying it was an "impossible hypothesis" and "patently absurd".^[174] The verdict was criticized as unjust by Hemraj's wife Khumkala,^[175] and her brother Ashok Bhushal.^[176] Hemraj's family members and relatives in Nepal continue to believe that the Talwars are guilty.^[177]

A book analyzing the trial court verdict titled 'The Killing of Aarushi and the Murder of Justice' critiques the judgment as well as the quality of evidence that was tendered in the case.^[178] It also argues that the Aarushi case holds up a mirror to similar cases of injustice in thousands of other criminal cases in India.

On 8 March 2018, the CBI challenged the acquittal in the Supreme Court,^[179] and on 10 August, the Supreme Court admitted the CBI's appeal.^[180]