Thankful to God for verdict: Talwars’ kin
NEW DELHI: After a nine-year struggle, Dr Rajesh Talwar and his wife Nupur heaved a sigh of relief on Thursday, after the Delhi High Court found them to be innocent of killing their teen daughter Aarushi and their domestic help Hemraj in 2008.
The relatives of the couple are equally relieved, with Vandana Talwar, Aarushi’s aunt, saying that the entire family had suffered for nearly a decade as the case dragged on.
“We are deeply relieved and thankful to God for the verdict. It has been an exhausting and extremely trying journey for our family,” she said.
She said the family was grateful to the high court for having acquitted Rajesh and Nupur, bringing to an end the injustice meted out to them.
“Our family, friends, the team of lawyers and people who were not even known to us before this tragedy happened; I would like to thank all the people who supported us throughout this long ordeal,” Vandana told reporters.
Sources said that the Talwar couple would likely be released on Friday, after they receive the court judgment through official channels.
14-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found dead, with her throat slit, inside her room at the Talwars’ Noida residence May 2008.
The walls in her room were splattered with blood, but the toys on the bed near the wall were spotless.
Suspicion initially went moved towards the Talwars’ 45-year-old domestic help Hemraj, who went missing the same day Aarushi was murdered. However, during their search, investigators found the body of Hemraj the very next day on the terrace of the Talwars’ house. The door to the terrace was found to be locked from the inside.
After ruling out the role of any of the family’s former servants, the police considered Rajesh and Nupur as the prime suspects in their daughter’s murder. The weapons reportedly used to commit the murders were a golf club – to cause head injuries – and a scalpel – to slit the throat.
In 2013, a Ghaziabad court held the Talwar couple guilty for the double murder of their daughter and Hemraj, and sentenced them to life imprisonment.
Thursday’s order by the Allahabad High Court, however, acquitted them of the double murder. Currently, the couple are lodged in Ghaziabad’s Dasna jail to serve their sentence.