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NEW DELHI: Bringing closure to the murder that shook India in 2008, a special CBI court on Tuesday sentenced Rajesh Talwar and his wife Nupur Talwar to life sentence for killing their 14-year-old daughter Aarushi Talwar and 49-year-old domestic help Hemraj.
Aarushi, who was a class IX student, and Hemraj were murdered with a golf club by the Talwars on the night of May 15 in 2008 after they reportedly found their daughter in “an objectionable position’’with the much older home servant, according to the CBI. This circumstantial evidence became the only basis of the judgment delivered by special CBI judge Shyam Lal in Ghaziabad on Tuesday after a 15-month trial.
The CBI could not gather any no forensic or material evidence against the dentist couple.
But the judge relied on the circumstantial evidence and convicted the dentist couple of murder, destruction of evidence and intention to commit the crime under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code.
“Now is the time to say omega in this case … it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused are the perpetrators of the crime,’’ the judge said.
14-year-old Aarushi Talwar who was murdered on May 15, 2008
Quoting the Bible and Quran in his 204-page judgment, the judge said, “They (parents) have extirpated their own daughter who had hardly seen 14 summers of her life and the servant… in the breach of the commandment ‘thou shall not kill’ and injunction of Holy Quran ‘take not life which God has made sacred’.
“The parents are the best protectors of their own children. That is the order of human nature but they have been freaks in the history of mankind where the father and mother became the killer of their own progeny.’’
Though the prosecution demanded death penalty for the couple, the judge said this case does not fall in the ‘rarest of rare’ category and awarded life sentence to the Talwar couple.
Defence lawyers are moving the Allahabad high court against the verdict.
In a travesty of sorts, the CBI had moved the court for closing the case in 2010, but the Talwar couple petitioned to reopen the case only to be given life sentence on Tuesday.
The couple were arrested after the murder and spent some time in jail in 2008.
Two friends of Hemraj, who were also arrested, were freed for lack of evidence.
The judge also imposed a fine of Rs 32000 on the Talwar couple.
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