Nagging questions as Talwars go scot-free

Nine years after their daughter Aarushi Talwar was murdered and four years after they were held guilty for it by a lower court in a much-hyped criminal case that shook the nation, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were exonerated by the Allahabad High Court on Thursday. A two-member bench cleared the duo on grounds that conviction could not be based on suspicion and that they were entitled to be given benefit of doubt. The Talwars had been given life imprisonment by the CBI special court earlier. The police and the court are clueless who killed Aarushi and the fulltime servant of the couple who was initially suspected of killing Aarushi but whose body was found on the terrace the next day. It was believed that much of the evidence was destroyed in the initial days of the investigation when the local police in the National Capital Region was looking after the case. By the time the case was handed over to the CBI, it was too late to piece together the evidence. The Aarushi case will go down in history as a case of botched up investigation that should be an object lesson for the future.

The Talwar couple which had been behind bars since November 2013, has now finally walked out free. But their release is likely to be challenged by CBI in Supreme Court soon. There is indeed a big question mark over whether the real killers would ever be found because mere circumstantial evidence has failed to reveal conclusively who the killers were. A 14-year-old-child’s life has been lost in circumstances that indeed raise disturbing questions. In the same NCR another gruesome killing in a five-star hotel is involved in a police investigation botchup—the murder of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of former Union minister Shashi Tharoor.