WHAT DID THE JUDGE DO?
An explosive new book reignites interest in one of India’s most sensational murder cases,
“Mummy, is it true that our cousin is dead?” asked my 5-year-old last week.
“Not dead,” interjected my 7-year-old. “Killed. Right, mum?”
And so began another difficult discussion in our sheltered suburban Toronto home on one of India’s most high-profile murder cases: that of Aarushi Talwar, 13, and Hemraj Banjade, 45.
Seven years after the murders and 18 months after the trial that convicted my cousin Nupur Talwar and her husband, Rajesh Talwar, of the murders, the case is back in the limelight in India.
On July 6, Penguin India released a book called Aarushi, by journalist Avirook Sen. His explosive revelations have caused an uproar. Mainstream media have published dozens of stories and interviews since its release. Reddit threads have sprouted. Online comments show that it remains a polarizing issue.
I’ve written about this case in the Star before, laying out the reasons my family believes these are wrongful convictions. Chiefly, I cited lack of credible evidence, lack of an established motive and the absence of murder weapons.
The case had been investigated by the powerful Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is like India’s FBI. My cousins had fought a trial where the prosecutors argued in court that the defence not be allowed to call any witnesses at all. Experts gave testimonies substantially different from their original statements to the police (which were on record). Investigators had brushed off evidence that pointed to someone else’s involvement in the murders as “typographical error.”
Now comes a book that tells us that the judge and his son were writing the judgment even before the defence team’s closing arguments had begun.
Witnesses speak of being pressured to change their statements. The prosecutors’ forensic expert tells the author that his testimony that the parents discovered Aarushi with the cook in her bedroom at night, and murdered both, was just an opinion. “The court took it as fact.”
When the author confronts the judge about inventing evidence in the judgment, he is told to “let bygones be bygones.”
According to Nielsen BookScan, a weekly sales tracking system through stores and online, Aarushi was the best-selling non-fiction book in the country for the week ending July 18. It was also No. 1 on the Financial Express bestseller list.
The book is in three parts, The Trial, The Investigation and The Dasna Diaries, so named for the excerpts it carries from Rajesh’s diaries written in Dasna Jail.
For me, the pearl in this oyster lay in that final part, where Sen circles around and talks to witnesses, police, investigators — and Judge Shyam Lal.
The Aarushi-Hemraj murder judgment was the judge’s last; he retired five days after delivering it. He lives in the northern Indian city of Allahabad, and is setting up a practice with his son Ashutosh Yadav, who is a criminal lawyer. The judged had shunned all media after the trial — until he spoke to Sen.
“I travelled to Allahabad, walked into his chamber and wouldn’t go away till he agreed he would grant me an interview,” Sen says. “I had no idea he would open up the way he did, and then there was the unexpected event of his son joining the conversation.”
The judgment was 210 pages, and although much of it was cut and pasted off other judgments, I was interested in how long it took to write. Ashutosh Yadav, who was extremely happy to have made his own contributions to the document, unwittingly let a secret out: ‘It took more than one month,’ he said. ‘So you had gone to Ghaziabad more than a month before to help out . . . ?’ ‘Yes, I was there,’ said Ashutosh. I took this information in, and did my best to appear deadpan. Because the facts were these: Judge Shyam Lal pronounced his judgment on 25 November 2013. Tanveer Ahmed Mir, counsel for the defence, began his final arguments on 24 October. Over the next two weeks he would argue on a total of 24 circumstances that he felt should lead to acquittal. Seven of these were major points.
As Judge Shyam Lal and his son sat down to write the judgment, Mir had not even begun.
“I just went quiet,” Sen tells me. “I took in the importance of what he had said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And when I composed myself, I understood that I was on to something.”
A critical component of the case against my cousin was the allegation that Hemraj and Aarushi were in her bedroom that night. Investigators felt proving this would establish the motive for murder by the parents.
The problem was there was no evidence Hemraj was in her room. His body was discovered a day after Aarushi’s — on the rooftop terrace. There was no evidence of sexual activity on Aarushi’s body. Hemraj’s blood was not in her room, although Aarushi’s was splattered all over the wall and the bed. His hair was not found in her room, nor was his DNA detected there.
Then a forensic scientist testified during the trial that Hemraj’s pillow cover had been seized from her room, suggesting his presence there. When the defence team challenged this and when, over loud objections from prosecutors, the pillow cover was un- sealed in court, the tag on it read that it had been seized from Hemraj’s own room.
Sen was there when this happened. It’s also in the court records.
Yet, Shyam Lal’s judgment puts Hemraj in Aarushi’s room by saying, “it becomes abundantly clear that Hemraj’s DNA has been found on the pillow cover which was recovered from the room of Aarushi.”
The book details a cringe-inducing interaction between journalist and judge on this discrepancy. Here, the judge switches between Hindi and English.
As I sat across him in his Allahabad home, I asked Shyam Lal whether he remembered the day in court when the CBI had to admit they had lied about Hemraj’s pillowcase being found in Aarushi’s room. ‘Yes, yes . . .’ ‘But in the judgment you returned a finding that the pillow cover was recovered from Aarushi’s room . . .’
Shyam Lal stiffened up slightly: ‘Dekhiye (Look), I cannot remember . . . har ek chhoti cheez aise . . .’ (every small thing). ‘But it was a very major thing,’ I went on. ‘Nahin (No), but what is the point of some controversy? I cannot remember . . . iss time pe . . .’ (at this time) ‘Sir, I find it very hard to believe that . . .’ ‘I cannot remember, I will not give you some hypothetical answer . . . Dekhiye, let bygones be bygones . . .’
My cousin Nupur, trapped in a dank prison, is so fragile that when she looked at the book cover two weeks ago, with its drops of blood around her daughter’s name, she got dizzy and had to be held up. Her blood pressure shot up with stress. She still cannot bring herself to read the book, her mother, Lata Chitnis (my mother’s older sister), tells me over the phone.
“I’ve told her, ‘Look Nupa, it details a lot of things about the judge and the witnesses, skip the first bit.’ But she can’t do it.”
Rajesh can handle two or three pages at a time, but then he puts it down.
“Do you think this book will . . . will this book help us?” my aunt asks me timidly.
It’s an overwhelming situation for us. My kids are now starting to read, so open tabs on the computer accidentally inform them of things I don’t feel prepared to talk about. Vandana Talwar, Rajesh’s sister-in-law, and I are reviving our flagging social media efforts — mainly Facebook and Twitter — to spread the word. We’ve changed our focus from “Justice for Aarushi” to “Free the Talwars.” Vandana has also put together a small group of friends and family where we brainstorm ideas on how to proceed. “Is it too much to expect the judiciary to look at the facts and evidence in an unbiased manner?” Vandana asks me.
“What if it had been me instead of Aarushi?” Aarushi’s best friend, Fiza Jha, now 21, asks in a powerful piece in The Quint. “Would my diary, too, have been read and misunderstood, would my texts and emails have been misconstrued, would a fight with my parents over something petty have been seen as a possible motive for murder? How difficult then, would my parents’ fight for justice have been? It’s terrifying to think of it.”
It’s not just the family and close friends who are deeply affected. Chiki Sarkar, who edited the book at Penguin India, says she was on her honeymoon in Japan when the final manuscript landed in her inbox.
“I couldn’t stop reading it,” she said. “Like everyone else, I had obsessed about this case. I think if a crime is ever committed in my house, I’m going to go around taking photos of everything myself. This book is about our institutions you have to depend upon if something goes wrong. That they’re so fragile is terrifying.”
“I took in the importance of what he had said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. . . . I understood that I was on to something.” AUTHOR AVIROOK SEN