15th May 2008. Night in Noida, New Delhi. 14-year-old Aarushi Talwar lay dead in her bed at home, murdered with a golf club. The book that she was reading, Chetan Bhagat’s novel Three Mistakes of My Life lay beside her. Aarushi was the daughter of two dentists, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar. Their live-in domestic help, 45-year-old Hemraj Banjade, was missing. Hemraj was automatically the suspect until his body was discovered the next night on the terrace.
The local police handled the crime in a shabby manner. The scene was not secured immediately as they should have. After ruling out the family’s ex-servants the police suspected that Aarushi’s parents murdered the two in an act of honor killing after finding them in a compromising position. Another theory was that Rajesh's extra-marital affair had led to his blackmail by Hemraj and a confrontation with Aarushi. The conclusion caused an uproar in society. The case was handed to CBI. Based on narco tests on Rajesh’s assistant Krishna and two domestic servants, the CBI suspected that they killed Aarushi after an attempted sexual assault and Hemraj for being a witness. This exonerated the Talwars. However, the three men could not be booked for lack of solid evidence.
In 2009 the CBI handed over the case to a new team which identified Rajesh Talwar as the suspect based on circumstantial evidence. The fresh trial began in June 2012. In Nov 2013 the parents Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. In January 2014 the couple challenged the decision in Allahabad High Court.
Journalist Avarook Sen wrote a book on it in 2015 in which he argued that the parents were victims of a miscarriage of justice.
Again in 2015, a Hindi film called Talvar (Sword) came out, based on the Noida double murders. It was written by Vishal Bhardwaj and directed by Meghna Gulzar. The parents were played by Neeraj Kabi and Konkona Sensharma. Irrfan Khan plays the protagonist Arun Kumar, the CBI officer who was in the initial investigating team of the agency. Tabu plays a cameo as his estranged wife. Sohum Shah as an ACP under Irrfan and Shishir Sharma as the new CBI chief scintillated in their parts. The film is brilliantly scripted employing Kurosawan technique to show accounts of the murder from various viewpoints. It fetched Bhardwaj a National award for adapted screenplay. He handles the film’s music score as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQNMsw8Ljjc&fbclid=IwAR1J5a7OUfvlgS9vsp9XRYrHjdssZPnTW_R07O1eIatKGC_VILqMIRtJQis
In 2017, the Allahabad High Court acquitted the parents.
(2017)
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