Dad killed Aarushi: Cops

Dad killed Aarushi: Cops
24 May 2008, 0231 hrs IST,Lalit Kumar,TNN

NOIDA: What was widely suspected but was virtually unspeakable has apparently come true. Dr Rajesh Talwar, one of the city's most successful dentists, killed his own daughter, Aarushi, and manservant Hemraj in cold blood to write an utterly depressing chapter in parent-child relationships, according to police.

To give a murkier twist to this dark tale, police said, there were two motives to the murders: Dr Talwar's extramarital affair with his professional partner, Dr Anita Durani, which was known and deeply resented by Aarushi, and the 14-year-old girl's "proximity" and "closeness" to the 47-year-old servant.

While police didn't say that Dr Talwar had confessed to the killings, the details they gave of the sequence of events on the fateful night of May 15-16 indicate that the doctor has sung. And a part of the song was Aarushi's "closeness" to Hemraj, offered perhaps as a mitigating circumstance for his murderous rage.

The sequence of events, however, doesn't necessarily bear out this rage. Dr Talwar had gone out that evening at 9.30pm and returned home two hours later. On his return, he surfed the net, and then went looking for Hemraj to his room.

He didn't find him there and went to Aarushi's room to find Hemraj with the girl in — as IG, Meerut Zone, Gurdarshan Singh, put it — an "objectionable but not compromising" position. It's not that blood rushed to the doctor's head and he killed in blind rage. Instead, he persuaded Hemraj to come with him to the terrace.

Once there, Dr Talwar struck Hemraj on his head with a hammer. As he fell bleeding, he took out a surgical knife and slit his throat. The doctor came down, fixed himself a whisky, had it and then entered Aarushi's room. He hit the girl with the hammer and then slit her throat with a surgical knife. It's interesting that when Dr Talwar discovered Hemraj with Aarushi, he was already armed with a hammer and a knife.

Why did he do it? Although there are two reasons on offer — him being consumed by passion for a woman and enraged by his daughter's opposition, as well as a desire to save the family's "honour" by killing his "loose" daughter — only further investigations will bring out the truth.

On his part, Dr Talwar vehemently denied his role in the murder. When he was being taken away, the harried doctor told reporters that he was being "framed". He said he didn't know why he was being framed. "It is being done by Dinesh Varma," he added. Now, who is this? Dr Talwar's brother is also a Dinesh, but he is Dinesh Talwar, not Varma. Also, the murder weapon has not yet been found.

After days of intense speculation over the culprit — ranging from domestic helps to the girl's friends — the cops on Friday gave out their definitive story. IG Gurdarshan Singh in Noida and additional DGP (law and order, crime and STF), Brij Lal, in Lucknow unravelled the plot at televised press conferences.