Unsolved murders of teenage girl and domestic worker
The 2008 Noida double murder case refers to the unsolved murders of 13-year-old girl Aarushi Talwar and 45-year-old man Hemraj Banjade, a live-in domestic worker employed by her family. The two were killed on the night of 15–16 May 2008 at Aarushi's home in Noida, India. The case aroused public interest as a whodunit story. The sensational media coverage, which included salacious allegations against Aarushi and the suspects, was criticised by many as a trial by media.
When Aarushi's body was discovered in her bedroom on 16 May, Hemraj was missing at the time, and was considered the main suspect. The next day, Hemraj's partially decomposed body was discovered on the terrace. The police were heavily criticized for failing to secure the crime scene immediately. After ruling out former domestic servants of the family, the police treated Aarushi's parents—Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar—as the prime suspects. The police suspected that Rajesh had murdered the victims after finding them in an "objectionable" position, or because Rajesh's alleged extra-marital affair had led to his blackmail by Hemraj and a confrontation with Aarushi. The Talwars' family and friends accused the police of framing the Talwars in order to cover up the botched-up investigation. The case was then transferred to the CBI, which exonerated the parents and suspected the Talwars' assistant Krishna Thadarai and two domestic servants—Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal. Based on the 'narco' interrogation conducted on the three men, the CBI assumed that they had killed Aarushi after an attempted sexual assault, and Hemraj for being a witness. The CBI was accused of using dubious methods to extract a confession, and all the three men were released for lack of evidence.
In 2009, the CBI handed over the investigation to a new team, which recommended closing the case. Based on circumstantial evidence, it named Rajesh Talwar as the sole suspect, but refused to charge him because of critical gaps in evidence. The parents opposed the closure report, calling CBI's suspicion of Rajesh Talwar as baseless. Subsequently, a special CBI court rejected the CBI's claim that there was not enough evidence, and ordered proceedings against the Talwars. In November 2013, the parents were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, amid criticism that the judgment was based on weak evidence. The Talwars successfully challenged the decision in the Allahabad High Court, which acquitted them in 2017. The case remains unsolved.
Background.
Aarushi Talwar (24 May 1994 – 16 May 2008) was a 13-year-old student at the Delhi Public School. She was the daughter of a dentist couple, Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar. The family lived in an apartment in Sector 25 (Jalvayu Vihar) of Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Rajesh and Nupur practiced together at their clinic in Sector 27 of Noida. They also saw patients at the Fortis Hospital, where Rajesh headed the dental department. In addition, Rajesh taught at the ITS dental college in Greater Noida. Anita and Praful Durrani, another dentist couple and close family friends of the Talwars, lived in the same city. The couple shared the Noida clinic with the Talwars: Rajesh and Anita worked at the clinic in the mornings (9 am–12 pm), while Praful and Nupur worked there in the evenings (5 pm–7 pm). The Durranis and the Talwars also shared a clinic in Hauz Khas area of Delhi.
Yam Prasad Banjade, better known as Hemraj, was the Talwar family's live-in domestic help and cook. He belonged to Dharapani village in the Arghakhanchi district of Nepal.
Events preceding the murders.
The murders on the night of 15–16 May 2008 were preceded by the following events:
The apartment.
The 1300 sq. ft. apartment had 3 bedrooms(including servants' room), a drawing-dining room and a servants' quarters, where Hemraj slept. Rajesh and Nupur slept in the master bedroom, while Aarushi slept in an adjacent room. Hemraj's room had a separate entry from outside the apartment; it also opened into the apartment from inside.
The entrance to the Talwars' apartment at Jalvayu Vihar had three doors: the outermost grill gate, a middle mesh door, and the innermost wooden door. The middle door and the wooden door were attached to the same frame Hemraj's room had two doors - one door opened inside the apartment, and the other door was located between the two grill doors. The Talwars had the outermost gate removed a year after the murders.
Discovery of Aarushi's body.
On 16 May 2008, the family's housemaid Bharati Mandal (35) rang their doorbell around 6 am. She had been employed six days earlier. Every day, Hemraj would open the door for her, as Nupur and Rajesh were late risers, but this time, nobody opened the door even after she rang a second time. She later stated that she tried pushing the outermost gate, but it did not open.
After Bharati rang the doorbell a third time, Nupur opened the innermost wooden door. Speaking through the mesh of the middle grill door, she told Bharati that this door was locked from outside. She asked Bharati about the whereabouts of Hemraj. When Bharati said that she had no idea, Nupur remarked that Hemraj must have gone outside to fetch milk and must have locked the door from outside. She asked Bharati to wait outside until Hemraj returned. Bharati did not want to wait and asked Nupur to throw the duplicate keys. Nupur asked her to go downstairs so that she could throw the keys to her from the balcony.
Nupur then called Hemraj's mobile phone, but the call was abruptly cut. When she tried calling him again, the phone appeared to have been switched off. When Bharati reached downstairs, Nupur asked her to go back and check if the door was just latched, not locked. Bharati insisted that Nupur throw the keys anyway, so that she wouldn't have to take the stairs again, in case the door was locked. Nupur then threw the keys down to Bharati.
According to the Talwars, by this time, Rajesh also woke up. He entered the living room and saw a near-empty Scotch whisky bottle on the dining table, which surprised him. He asked Nupur who had kept the bottle there, and then alarmed, asked her to check Aarushi's room. Aarushi's room had a self-locking door, and it would generally be locked. It could be opened only from inside or from outside with a key. But the couple found it unlocked on that morning. When they entered the room, they saw Aarushi's dead body lying on her bed. Rajesh started screaming, while Nupur remained silent (due to shock, according to her).
Meanwhile, Bharati returned to the outermost gate: she pushed it, and it opened without the key. She found that the middle door was latched, but not locked. She opened the latch and walked in. When she entered the apartment, she saw Rajesh and Nupur crying. Nupur asked her to come inside Aarushi's room. Bharati stood at the entrance of the room, as Nupur walked inside. Aarushi's body lay on her bed; it was covered with a flannel blanket. Nupur pulled the blanket, and Bharati saw that Aarushi's throat was slit. Both the parents blamed Hemraj for Aarushi's murder in front of the maid. Bharati walked out of the apartment to inform the neighbours. She returned to the house and asked the Talwars if they wanted her to do the daily household chores. When they said "No", she moved on to work in other households.
The Talwars called their family and friends. Puneesh Rai Tandon, a neighbour who lived one floor below the Talwars, asked the Jalvayu Vihar security guard Virendra Singh to inform the police. By the time the police arrived, there were 15 people in the living room and 5-6 people in the Talwars' bedroom; only Aarushi's room was vacant. The crime scene had been "completely trampled upon". The story of a murder in an affluent neighbourhood also attracted many mediapersons, who gathered around the house by 8 am.
Hemraj as the suspect.
On 16 May, the missing servant Hemraj was the prime suspect. In his police complaint, Rajesh blamed Hemraj for his daughter's murder. He repeatedly told the police to pursue Hemraj instead of wasting time in the apartment, and offered them 25,000 rupees to rush to Hemraj's native village in Nepal. The police suspected that Hemraj entered Aarushi's room in an inebriated state after consuming Scotch whisky, and tried to sexually assault her. When she resisted, he killed her with a kukri (a Nepali knife). The police announced a reward of ₹ 20,000 for tips leading to his capture.
Aarushi's body was taken for post-mortem around 8:30 am by two Uttar Pradesh police constables. Rajesh's brother Dinesh Talwar, his driver Umesh Sharma and his childhood friend Ajay Chadha accompanied the constables. Around 1 pm, the body was brought home and placed on ice slabs in the living room. It was taken for cremation at the Antim Niwas crematorium around 4 pm. According to the Talwars, who were later accused of being in a hurry to cremate the body, it was decomposing fast, and the family elders were pushing for cremation. In addition, the police confirmed that the body was not needed for any further examination.
The police later alleged that the Talwars' domestic staff showed undue haste in cleaning Aarushi's room. In Talwars' defence, their compounder Vikas Sethi told the court that he had received the permission to clean the house from the police personnel and a lady constable present on the crime scene.
A part of Aarushi's blood-stained mattress was cut out and sent to the forensics lab along with her pillow, bed sheet and clothes. Vikas Sethi later testified that he, along with three others, tried to dump the remaining part of the mattress on the terrace, but found it locked. An old lady then told him to put the mattress on the neighbouring terrace. Rajesh's driver Sharma then asked the neighbour Puneesh Tandon for the key to his terrace. Earlier, at 4 pm also, Sharma had asked Tandon for the key, saying that he needed to dump the ice brought for Aarushi's body. This time, Tandon opened the terrace himself. Sharma, Sethi and two others dragged the mattress to his terrace. Tandon then locked the terrace door. None of them noticed the body of Hemraj, which was lying on the adjacent terrace, separated by a grilled wall.
According to CBI, when the post-mortem report was being written between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on 16 May, a series of telephonic conversations had happened between Dinesh Talwar, Dr. Sushil Chaudhury (Dinesh's friend and the chairman of the ICARE Eye Hospital) and K K Gautam (retired Deputy Superintendent of Police). K K Gautam, while deposing at the CBI court later in 2012, stated that Chaudhury had requested him to get any references to a sexual assault removed from the post-mortem report, but he refused to oblige. He told the court that he had mentioned this incident to the first CBI team, but they left out this information from their records.
Discovery of Hemraj's body.
On the morning of 16 May, the visitors to the Talwars' house noticed some bloodstains on the terrace door handle. Rajesh's former colleagues Rajiv Kumar Varshney and Rohit Kochhar later told the police that they saw bloodstains on the terrace door, its lock and the staircase leading to the terrace. While visiting the Talwars' house, Varshney had taken the stairs to the terrace. However, several other witnesses testified that they had not noticed any bloodstains on the staircase in the morning. These witnesses included several police officers, Umesh Sharma, Puneesh Rai Tandon, Bharati Mandal and Vikas Sethi. Thus, the bloodstains might have been left by the group that tried taking Aarushi's mattress to the Talwars' terrace.
Kocchar stated that the bloodstains on the terrace door were brought to the attention of a police constable named Akhilesh Kumar. Praful Durrani, who also visited the house, claimed that the policeman initially dismissed the spot on the terrace door as rust, and was also dismissive of the bloodstains on the floor. According to Varshney, the police told him that the killer must have tried to escape through or hide weapon on the terrace, but returned after finding it locked. Eventually, the police were persuaded to investigate the terrace, but they could not get the key to the terrace door. Rohit Kochhar later testified that when a