Aarushi case caused a perfect storm of injustice

Aweek after Rajesh and Nupur were freed after four years as jail convicts, I happened to meet them socially. Their ordeal began on May 15, 2008, when their 14-year-old daughter Aarushi Talwar was discovered murdered (a day later, their middle-aged servant Hemraj’s body was discovered on the terrace of their apartment block). The police, and later India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), could not find the killers, though suspicion remains against Rajesh’s compounder and two other friends of Hemraj, all now untraceable. So the police first assassinated Aarushi’s character, then the CBI concocted an illogical case against the parents. This case was forensically dissected in Avirook Sen’s true-crime account Aarushi, a best-seller in India. It was at his house that I met them. After the shoddy investigation and the evidence-tampering by investigators trying to shoehorn the case into a preconceived determination, the lower trial court produced an even shoddier judgement. The high court, hearing an appeal by Rajesh and Nupur, lambasted the investigation, criticised the judgement, overturned the conviction and freed the couple.

“You know, some people think I paid to have this book written?” Rajesh said to me. What could I tell him? Thanks to a reckless media, reporters were trampling the crime scene before the forensic team had arrived, contaminating evidence. A narrowminded policeman then appeared before the media just six days after the murder, denouncing Aarushi’s character because she went for “sleepovers”; having two daughters, I was outraged by this deduction. (As it evolved, the case made clear the chasm between two Indias: one small-town and traditional, the other urbane and English-speaking). To top it all, TV news channels competed with another in lurid re-enactments (unsourced or unsubstantiated) of the night Aarushi was murdered.

That it polarised viewers is an understatement. Coincidentally, I lived in Chennai at the time of the murder, where our newspaper treated the story as run-of-the-mill. (Other papers were even more staid in their approach.) I missed the drama of TV news. When I returned to Delhi in 2013, the trial was fast approaching denouement; and then Rajesh and Nupur were convicted. It barely registered on my personal radar until August 2014, when Avirook, a friend and former colleague, telephoned. He was

Those who were convinced it was an honour killing by the parents would not budge from their position — despite what the forensic evidence said. doubly depressed: his mother had recently passed away; he and his wife were divorcing. He had lost motivation and was stuck mid-way through his truecrime book. He needed help. So I helped Avirook by immersing myself in the case and nudging him forward. The book goes solely by the evidence presented in court, and I couldn’t believe what was clearly a perfect storm of injustice.

More shocking, however, were people’s reactions to the case. Those who were convinced it was an honour killing by the parents would not budge from their position — despite what the forensic evidence said. One woman told me that anyone speaking in favour of Rajesh and Nupur were “people like us”, and that parents had likely paid Avirook to write the book, which I knew to be absurd. The polarisation over Aarushi was as bad as the political polarisation in India nowadays. No wonder the book was a blockbuster.

I had no words for Rajesh. He spent the last four years convicted for the murder of his only child. While in jail, he was exhibited in front of visiting VIPs as if he were a zoo animal. I felt for him.

“We don’t come out to socialise,” he said. “We only came for Avirook.” What was it like to be free again, I asked, and he shrugged. Living was difficult, he said. It was not just meeting people again: “I find it difficult to be in public spaces. People just stare. Indians think nothing about staring at you.”

Rajesh found it bizarre that when adults gathered nowadays, they did not interact: “Everyone is looking down at their phone,” he said. At the time of the conviction, he remembered that Blackberry messenger was catching on. “Now I find everyone communicates through WhatsApp,” he said. Whatsapp is the worst, I agreed with him. For Chhath puja (a festival) this week, my aunt got the date for the rising Sun from a WhatsApp forward. For the first time, Rajesh laughed.

Rajesh is into religion now: “Without it, you can’t face adversity.” A Sikh gentleman who had read Avirook’s book and had got himself involved in assisting the legal team had drawn close to the couple. After their release he escorted them for Gurudwara visits. It was clear, however, when we said goodbye that his and Nupur’s freedom was just a respite from the hell they had unjustly been subjected to. It is difficult to believe in a universe that cruelly snatched away a girl during the innocence of her childhood. Yet one must keep the faith.

Aditya Sinha is a senior journalist based in India.