By S.P. Singh, IANS,
Noida (Uttar Pradesh) : The once bustling house is closed, locking within its walls the lives – and deaths – of teenager Aarushi Talwar and domestic help Hemraj whose murders remain unsolved even eight months later. While neighbours wonder whether the truth will ever be known, father Rajesh Talwar says he is waiting for the probe to be completed.
The May 16, 2008, murders shocked the nation. The first arrest, of Aarushi’s father Rajesh Talwar, on May 23, and the police version that it was an honour killing was even more shocking.
The Talwars, both established dental surgeons who have now moved away from their home in Jalvayu Vihar in Noida, are disappointed at the way the probe into their daughter’s death is progressing.
Rajesh Talwar, who spent 50 days in jail, told IANS: “It is up to the CBI to bring out the facts. We are waiting for them to complete their investigations. We hope that it will be on the right track.”
The neighbours of their L-25 Jalvayu Vihar residence, where Aarushi and Hemraj were murdered in May last year, ask the same questions.
“It is very strange that even the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has failed to crack the case and bring out the real culprits. The agency based its investigations only on suspects and had no real evidence to rely on,” said a neighbour of Rajesh Talwar, the father of Aarushi, on condition of anonymity.
“The Rs.100,000 reward announced by the CBI for anyone helping to recover the crime objects shows that the probe agency has not been able to reach any conclusion so far. Even so many months after the murder, the culprits haven’t been nabbed,” said Monika Chopra, a resident of Jalvayu Vihar.
Brimming with life and activity till May 16 last year, when Aarushi’s body was found with her throat slit, the house now remains locked and the Talwars visit their home only once or twice a month.
The laundryman in the L-25 complex said: “The Talwar family comes here to look up their house or to take any object. Sometimes they stay for 20 minutes, at other times they remain for half an hour to one hour. It is only then that we get to see them.”
The husband-wife duo also visit the parents of Nupur who lives in the same colony. When this correspondent visited, Nupur’s mother said her daughter and son-in-law were away at their clinics in Delhi.
The CBI, which is still to file a chargesheet and earlier this week put out an advertisement announcing a Rs.100,000 award for clues, has also got flak from the Nepali Association in Noida that believes its fraternity has been targeted.
The CBI, which took over the case on May 31, arrested Krishna, the compounder of Rajesh Talwar, and Rajkumar – the domestic help of the Duranis, family friends of the Talwars, and Mandal, a driver, in June but were forced to set them free on bail after they failed to file a charge sheet against them in court within 90 days.
Rajkumar and Mandal are from Nepal.
Lamenting the “insensitive attitude” of the CBI, the Nepali Association asserted that the CBI had made Nepalis “scapegoats” and arrested them only to “cover up their own failure in investigations”.
Chintamani Bhattrai, general secretary of the All India Nepali Association, said: “The CBI left no stone unturned to fabricate the whole case. It questioned almost everybody that it got, a majority of whom were Nepalis, but still it got no evidence.