‘ Judge acted like filmmaker’
Trial court made mockery of law, says HC
The Allahabad high court has lacerated the trial court judge in the Aarushi murder case, saying he acted like a film director to create a fictional scenario, used fallacious analogy and ignored the basic tenets of law.
High court Justices B. K. Narayana and A. K. Mishra listed a litany of errors, missteps and fanciful deductions by the trial judge while convicting dentist couple Nupur and Rajesh Talwar for the double murders of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj in May 2008.
“The trial judge is supposed to be fair and transparent and should act as a man of ordinary prudence and he should not stretch Like a film director, the trial Judge has tried to thrust coherence amongst facts inalienably scattered here and there but ( has) not giving any coherence to the idea as to what in fact happened
A. K. Mishra, his imagination to infinity rendering the whole exercise mockery of law,” the court said. Additional sessions judge Shyam Lal in Ghaziabad ( UP) had sentenced the Talwars to life imprisonment on November 28, 2013 after finding them guilty on circumstantial evidence.
Justice Lal has “prejudged things in his own fashion, drawn conclusion by embarking on erroneous analogy conjecturing to the brim on apparent facts telling a different story propelled by vitriolic reasoning,” the judges said in their order on Thursday to acquit the Talwars.
The court said the circumstantial evidence against the couple was insufficient to hold them guilty, and that they should be given the benefit of doubt. A copy of the written judgement was uploaded on the court website on Friday.
Writing his own 10- page views in the 273- page judgment, Justice Mishra said that “like a film director, the trial Judge has tried to thrust coherence amongst facts inalienably scattered here and there but ( has) not giving any coherence to the idea as to what in fact happened”.
He added that “by dint of fallacious analogy and reasoning” Justice Lal surprisingly assumed “fictional animation” of what actually happened inside and outside the Talwars' Noida residence on May 15- 16, 2008, to provide “live and colourful description of the incident”.
Aarushi, who would have turned 14 on May 24, 2008, was found dead in her room in the Talwar residence on May 16 morning by her parents. Her throat had been slit.
After a botched investigation by the UP police, the CBI took over the case and arrested the parents on circumstantial evidence, which was used to convict them.