After four years, Talwars walk free
Visited temple and a gurdwara on the way home Refused money for treating inmates
Dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, exonerated in the murder of their only teenage daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj in 2008, were freed on Monday evening after four years in Dasna jail in Ghaziabad.
There was mayhem on the road outside the jail with mediapersons scrambling to capture the Talwar couple walking out. Watched by a huge crowd, the Talwars, each holding bags, walked out of the Dasna prison bad and stopped — Rajesh in a white shirt and dark trousers and Nupur in a salwar kurta — letting multiple cameras capture their first few moments of freedom.
The Allahabad high court had on Thursday cancelled the life sentence handed out to the Talwars by a special CBI court that had convicted them on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
Before going to Nupur Talwar’s parents’ home in Jal Vayu Vihar, where they will be staying for now, the couple stopped at a Sai temple and a gurdwara in Noida. Their own apartment, in which their daughter was murdered, is in the same complex and has tenants. “I want my clients to live in peace. It is my humble request with folded hands that their honour and dignity be restored,” lawyer Tanveer Ahmed Mir told reporters.
The Talwars’ release was delayed because the high court verdict could not be delivered to the Dasna court last week. The couple is said to have asked for police protection, citing an earlier attack on Rajesh Talwar at the Ghaziabad court. Jail superintendent Dadhiram Maurya said that jail authorities had requested the Ghaziabad district administration to give security to the couple till the time they reached home. “The district administration has accepted our request,” he added.
A senior jail official said that the dentist couple has offered to visit the prison every fortnight to treat prisoners. They helped revive the dental department at the prison hospital and treated prisoners as well as the staff, police officers and their children over the years without charging anything. According to jailor D. Maurya, the Talwars refused `49,500 that was given to them as consulting fees.
“We were concerned about the dental department after their release. They have assured us that they would visit jail to attend to inmates every 15 days,” jail doctor Sunil Tyagi said.
In what remains India’s most sensational whodunit, Aarushi Talwar was found with her throat slit in her bedroom just days short of her 14th birthday. The family’s domestic help Hemraj was suspected until his decomposing body was discovered the next day on the rooftop of the apartment building.