Dear Mihir Srivastava:

I was forced to write this letter when I came upon this error-ridden article you wrote Aug. 1, 2015 in Outlook magazine.
Unfortunately, this is exactly the kind of piece that gave traction to falsehoods in the first place. That you chose to add a
class angle to muddy what is ultimately a battle between the truth and lies is also unfortunate.
Your story is still largely based on the closure report filed in December 2010 (This report, btw, said it had insufficient
evidence against any of the suspects) Much has happened since then. If you could acquaint yourself of the latest
developments and be presented with facts this time, you might be able to recognize the truth. Or at least thats the hope
of this family that is fighting for justice.
A guilty conviction requires evidence. In this twisted case NO evidence = (cleaning up of evidence) = guilt.
Here below, Ive highlighted a few points. Yellow = your text, green = my words.
In the past, we typically just gritted our teeth, choked back our tears and kept silent with stories like these. But this really is
a poster case for much that was wrong with how this case was reported. Enough is enough.
Thank you for your continued interest in this case.
Shree Paradkar
(Nupur Talwars cousin)

OPINION

Why The Talwars Should Be Freed

A recent book called Aarushi has revived interest in a case that, seven years later, remains an enduring
mystery...
MIHIR SRIVASTAVA
It is easily one of the most sensational crimes in Indian criminal history. It involved the murder of a pretty, vivacious
teenage girl, Aarushi, from a fairly well to do family. She was the only child of Nupur and Rajesh Talwar, dentists running a
private practice in Noida, where they lived. She was murdered during the night of May 15-16, 2008.
There were four people in their Jalvayu Vihar flat in Noida, which was locked from outside.What does that tell you? That
obviously there was an outsider. The fourth person was Hemraj, the Nepalese family retainer who lived in a room on the
terrace. Factual error he lived in the same flat. There were two murders that night. The murderers were not strangers to
the house. One body was found inside the house, the other outside on the terrace a day later. The two left alive, parents
of AarushiRajesh and Nupur Talwarclaim to have slept through the murders. There are innumerable loose ends and
subtexts to this.
The parents were convicted of murdering their daughter Aarushi and Hemraj by a local CBI court in Ghaziabad last year.
Factual error it was in 2013. The Talwars blame the media, the CBI and the Noida police for being biased and blinkered
and that they have been denied justice. Certain news channels and publications made up their mind that they are
innocent. Some eminent writers concluded that Rajesh and Nupur were wronged and victims of a gross miscarriage of
justice. Their primary, and if I may say prima facie, source of information is the same: the Talwar couple. Yep, this is rather
prima facie. Other sources include post-mortem reports, statements to police, and court records including witness
testimonies that are in the public domain There are alternative interpretations possible to Talwars' selective dissemination
of details of the crime to defend themselves. Can we stick to facts rather than personal interpretations?.
I would just like to deal with one: destruction of evidences and doctoring of the crime scene. The police arrived at 7 am
an hour after the parents claim to have discovered their only daughter murdered. Though, the killers were the same,
treatment meted out to two bodies were different.. Unlike Hermraj's bludgeoned body, Factual error. Their post-mortem
reports indicate similar injuries Aarushi's was lying undisturbed on her bed despite the use of violent force, her neck slit
with a small, sharp surgical instrument The bias is showing. The prosecution did not produce any dental scalpel in court .
Obvious that a cutting surface of less than 1 cm cant produce a single stroke deep gash of the type seen on both victims.
resulted in excessive bleeding: pool of blood and droplets. A circular wet mark visible below pelvic area of Aarushi's body
on the bedsheet, indicate that she was wiped clean. However, her visibly untied pyjamas did not have any sign of
dampness. In the closure report, the CBI also states, 'The vaginal orifice of the deceased was unduly large and mouth of
[the] cervix was visible.' Please ask a credible gynaecologist if this is a medical possibility, especially in a 13-year-old.
The body was taken for post-mortem at 9 am, two hours Factual error- post-mortem started after noon after the police
arrived. The post-mortem was carried out soon after and the body returned to the family in a few hours, and consigned to
the flames the same evening. I had reported earlier in this case, 'a telephonic loop was created six times between
Rajesh's brother, Dinesh Talwar, a family friend Dr Sushil Chaudhary and KK Gautam (the same retired DSP who later
helped the police find Hemraj's body) and an unidentified number, in this order, and soon after in the reverse order, on the
evening of May 16, when the post-mortem report was being prepared. This was done, the CBI maintains, to ensure that
the word 'rape' does not appear in the post-mortem report. Again a similar loop was created twice between 9 and 10 the
next morning (May 17), just before KK Gautam helped the police recover Hemraj's body from the Talwars' terrace.' It
proves that Talwars were in contact with the doctor who performed the post-mortem on Aarushi. Much to be said here,
but most critically this: even the judge was forced to pass on this evidence as being hearsay.

But why was there a need to expedite the process when the Noida police were already acting very swiftly in the case.
Further, and fairly shockingly, as I reported for Open Magazine, 'it was found that Aarushi's vaginal swabs, sent for testing
at the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad, did not match her blood samples. In other words, the
swabs did not belong to her. Not clear what the implication is here. Are you blaming the Talwars for the investigators
inability to maintain continuity of evidence? The CBI raided the Noida District Hospital to find that Aarushi's original
medical file, her pathology reports, autopsy findings had all gone missing. The vital clues that could have led to the
murderers were lost forever.' This is new information that you seem to alone be privy to since no such statement is
available on the court record. The original pathology reports of Aarushi are clearly available in the court record. No
spermatozoa were found in the slides. As for the slides not being of Aarushi, the CFSL report does say that they could not
give conclusive report that the slide was of Aarushi. But in the court testimony of Dr. BK Mahapatra where the cross
examination shows that the DNA on the slides clearly matched Aarushis DNA
The murderers know that enough evidence has been destroyed. The dark clouds of doubt will loom over the case, make
this otherwise simple murder case a profound mystery of our times. Arun Kumar, IPS officer, who led the first CBI team,
seemed to be eager to exonerate the Talwars. His investigation appeared geared to establish that the parents didn't do it
rather than who did it. He carried out a drill. He made a constable sit in Talwars' bedroom and the other in Aarushi's room.
The noisy air conditioners were switched on. Loud sounds were made in Aarushi's room, and the person deployed in
Talwar's room didn't hear anything alarming. Hence, the CBI concluded, Talwars could have been in the adjacent room,
with a common wall, part of it a wooden partition, without hearing the murder taking place a few feet away. Thank you for
explaining how they slept through the murder. This test, btw, was conveniently not produced in court, until instructions of
the Allahabad High Court forced prosecutors to do so.
The servantsKrishna, Raj Kumar and Vijay Mandal were detained for three months, multiple narco-tests were
conducted on them at various places, but not one on the Talwars during this time. When I asked Arun Kumar why the
Talwars were let off after a lie detector test while the servants were repeatedly exposed to intravenous narco-tests, (no
narco was needed because unlike with the servants, the other two tests showed no deception, the investigating agency
told the Talwars. But they underwent both brain-mapping and narco-analysis under the supervision of the second team of
CBI and the reports conclusively and unambiguously showed that they were not involved in these murders He told me that
he was sure that the Talwars' weren't lying. What he said next was significant: 'Certain truths should not come out in public
domain in the larger interest of the society.' I wondered if he was investigating a murder case or playing social reformer.
He was the same officer who concluded that the serial slaughter of children in the Nithari case was entirely the handiwork
of the servant Surinder Koli and not the owner of the house, Moninder Singh Pander.
Then a second team, under SP Neelab Kishore, investigated deeper into the role of the parents, as much as the first team
investigated the role of the servants. A closure report was filed by CBI basically stating that they could not prove that
Rajesh and Nupur Talwar killed Aarushi and Hemraj. The Talwars objected to the report, and its conclusion, and
challenged it in court. There was sufficient evidence to nab the culprit/culprits, they argued. The court granted their
request to reopen the case, but with a rider: that they would be tried as co-accused in the twin-murders, not parents of a
victim.
I have been accused of being a CBI agent. I would like to clarify that I have never been approached by any CBI official in
this case. I approached them for details and was accorded no special treatment. My source of information was varied. I
met the Talwars several times. I also met the local policemen of Noida and the three servants, their families and Hemraj's
family. I was aghast at the utterances of senior officials of Noida police to the media, vilifying the reputation of the
deceased girl and her family. But I was intrigued by their stand, and motivated to dig deeper into the case.
If anyone approached me in the case it was the Talwars after I wrote a piece for India Today, The Untold Story where I
hinted at the possible role of 'insiders' in January 2011. Many years later, someone called Rahul, approached me. He was
hired by the Talwars to do their PR. He invited me, at the behest of Dinesh Talwar, Rajesh's elder brother who is a pillar of
strength for the whole family, to talk with them. I was told that I was confused about the case and mistaken in what I had
written. The Talwars, he said, would like to clarify facts and give their perspective. Yes this correct
I had a couple of long sessions with the Talwar family, Dinesh in particular. On certain specific queries he was evasive. He
said he would discuss it with his lawyers before he said anything to me. He wanted to know my sources of information.
One afternoon, a meeting was organised with friends of the Talwar's and some of Aarushi's friends. I felt their hostility
towards me. They offered earnest arguments to explain why the Talwars were innocent. A brief meeting with Rajesh and
Nupur Talwar was also organised. My interactions with them led to a cover story with Open Magazine titled The Survivors.
This story is one of many examples of how they orchestrated a media campaign to spread that message that they were
victims of a media trail. When investigators plant stories in the media, its business as usual. When ordinary Indians try to
have their voices heard, it becomes a problem?
In fact, I found that many journalists were sympathetic. One of them did a chapter on Aarushi murder which was an exact
reproduction of the Talwar's version, implicating the three other servants. They did this without meeting them, or their
families, or their representatives, or the local police. Perhaps because the servants can't present their case to the media
there has been a protracted attempt to make them the scapegoats without asking some vital questions, like who
destroyed the evidence? They were arrested subsequent to scientific tests that had implicated their involvement in the

crime. They were not even investigated by the second team despite being suspects the first time so please dont
artificially inject class into this situation.
This attempt to muddy the waters by introducing subtexts to the narrative of this crime is disheartening. The judge who
pronounced them guilty can't write in English, so he is biased against those who can. The same goes for the rustic Noida
police. The Talwars giving free dental treatment to the inmates, or that they celebrated their 25th marriage anniversary
inside the jail has little bearing on whether they killed their daughter (and Hemraj) or not. Manu Sharma organises cricket
matches and is very popular amongst the inmates. Does that have any bearing on the fact that he killed Jessica Lal?
Did these same writers feel any moral pangs at hinting that the three servants are guilty without meeting them? Or what
happened to them and their families?
There isn't sufficient evidence to nail anyone in the case, but some can clearly be held responsible for destruction of
evidence. My personal opinion, which has no legal validity, is to free the Talwars and close the case. I am sure one day
the real culprits will own up to their crime. If not, they will be condemned to a life of guilt. The burden of guilt can be
onerous, more distressing than the confines of any prison.