Case against Talwars hinged on suspicion, tutored witnesses

''Suspicion, however, grave it may be, can not take the place of proof'', the Allahabad high court said while acquitting Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar in the murder of their daughter Aarushi and servant Hemraj.
 
The division bench comprising Justice B.K.Narayana and Justice A.K.Mishra pointed out numerous loopholes in the CBI theory linking the Talwars with the twin murder and said that ''neither the circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is sought to be drawn have been fully established nor the same are consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the appellants''
 
''The circumstances are neither conclusive in nature nor they exclude every possible hypothesis except the one of the guilt of the appellant...the chain of circumstances, in this case, is not complete so as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the appellant,'' the bench said in its 273-page judgement delivered on Thursday.
 
The court found that the Bharti Mandal, the maid of Talwars and a key prosecution witness had been ''tutored''. 
 
''The chain of circumstances stood snapped the moment, the prosecution failed to prove by any cogent and reliable evidence that the appellants' flat was locked from inside, when Bharti Mandal rang the doorbell of their flat on the morning of May 16, 2008 and a strong possibility of outsiders having accessed into the appellants' flat and left after committing the double murder and in the process latched the middle iron mesh door of the appellants' flat from outside and left the outer grill door of their flat open evinced from the evidence adduced by the prosecution itself,'' the court said.
 
The court also found no reason ''to fasten the appellants with the guilt of double murder merely on the proof of the deceased being last seen alive with the appellants in their flat on the night of May 15, 2008 specially in view of the alternative hypothesis of the double murder covenanted in the prosecution case itself,'' it said.
 
The circumstances of this case upon being collectively considered did not lead to the irresistible conclusion that the appellants alone were the perpetrators of crime in question and on the evidence adduced in this case certainly two views were possible; one pointing to the guilt of the appellants; and the other to their innocence, it added.
 
Aarushi and Hemraj were found murdered at the Noida residence of the Talwars, both dental surgeons, at Jalvayu Vihar on May 15, 2008. The killings had evoked a nation wide interest and the then UP government had recommended a CBI probe into the matter.