The Allahabad High Court today acquitted Rajesh and Nupur Talwar in the murder of their teenage daughter Aarushi and their domestic help Hemraj in 2008. The verdict ends a nine-year ordeal of the parents who were found guilty by a CBI court of murdering 14-year-old Aarushi in a fit of rage because they suspected her of having an affair with Hemraj.
A division bench of the court comprising justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra upheld the Talwars’ appeal against the CBI court order sentencing them to life imprisonment on November 26, 2013. Nupur and Rajesh Talwar have been serving their sentence in Ghaziabad’s Dasna jail.
Aarushi was found dead inside her room in the Talwars’ Noida residence with her throat slit in May 2008. 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. 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).
