The Allahabad High Court is likely to pronounce its verdict on Thursday (12 october) on an appeal filed by Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, who had challenged a CBI court’s order convicting them for the murder of their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj in 2008.
The couple were awarded life sentence by a special CBI court in Ghaziabad on November 26, 2013, a day after their conviction.
Nupur and Rajesh Talwar are at present serving their sentence in Ghaziabad’s Dasna jail.
A division bench of the high court comprising justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra had reserved its judgement on 7 September on the appeal filed by the dentist couple, fixing 12 October as the date for the verdict.
14-year-old Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars’ Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. Then the family’s Nepalese domestic help was discovered killed on the terrace. The needle of suspicion had initially moved towards 45- year-old Hemraj, who had gone missing but his body was recovered from the terrace of the house two days later.
Rajesh Talwar was arrested seven days after the murder and spent two months in jail before getting bail. Both Rajesh and his wife, Nupur, has been in jail since November 2013.
As the Uttar Pradesh Police drew flak over shoddy investigation into the case which was making national headlines, the then chief minister Mayawati handed over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
What added more confusion in the case was the sensational twists and turns after two CBI officers reached contradictory conlusions on the basis of more or less the same evidence.
The first team led by Arun Kumar, as reported by Times of India, claimed a breakthrough on the basis of “scientific evidence”, primarily narco-analysis test reports, and arrested three men — Talwar’s compounder Krishna and two domestic helps working in the neighbourhood, Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal. But the agency failed to chargesheet the accused, resulting in their discharge.