Original subtitles

(TEXT ALERT PINGS)

♪ (MYSTERIOUS MUSIC PLAYS) ♪

-♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪ -WOMAN: The question is,

"Can you cause someone else to commit suicide?"

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

Oh!

Male reporter (on TV): Thank you both, uh, for joining us.

Uh, Nupur, you-- you said yesterday that you were--

you were devastated a-- a day later.

Is-- is-- is it sinking in that you may never know

who actually killed Aarushi?

Are you still devastated?

Yes, Vikram. Completely shattered.

Um... uh...

Completely broken, very upset.

I... I have no words to, uh, express

what I'm going through right now.

Rajesh, would you like to add something to that?

It's painful to the extent of being absolutely unbearable.

And, uh, you know, we've done everything

possibly what and we were asked to do,

or we thought would help.

And, uh, you know, I don't think anybody can do more than this.

Female reporter: Will we ever know the true case that had

the entire nation sitting up demanding answers?

What is the most glaring question,

at the heart of it all, that remains unanswered?

Officer: Well, we-- we don't have a perpetrator.

We have no idea what actually happened that evening.

Vikram: The entire nation watching every twist and turn,

police officers faltered, apologized and then faltered again.

The CBI, a premier investigating agency,

taking over the investigation almost 15 months back.

Female reporter: More than two and a half years after the investigation

into the murder of 13-year-old Aarushi Talwar,

there is no answer to who killed her.

Arpit: There have been thousands of theories about the servants,

how they might have killed Aarushi,

and it has to do with the class divide in our society.

Female reporter: For Rajesh and Nupur,

they want the killers to be found.

Protesters: We want justice, we want justice!

We want justice! We want justice!

(chanting fades): We want justice! We want justice!

Fiza: Aarushi was a really likeable girl,

she had a ton of friends and she never really fought with anyone

and she was really, really shy.

Fiza Jha: I remember her laugh very vividly.

She had like a very kind of silly, dorkish laugh.

By around class eight, nine, she started becoming like a young woman.

She started getting attention from boys

and started becoming a little more conscious about her looks.

But she was always really focused on her academics

and she was just really calm and cool in a sense.

Well, at some point we started going to the same dance classes

which is how we started spending a lot of time together,

uh, so we became very, very tight.

Fiza: The family was extremely, extremely loving

and they really, really doted on her, like...

giving her gifts and kind of giving her whatever she wanted,

but her also really respecting them

and doing what she was supposed to do as a kid at that age.

The day before, we were very excited

because Aarushi's birthday was coming up

and we'd been planning a party for her

and my parents were going out of town so I was also planning

to stay at her house that entire weekend and...

and the last time I spoke to her was actually the night before.

And we had a brief conversation

and I was getting another call

so I said, "Okay, I'll call you back."

And, uh, I hung up and then I didn't call her back.

Dinesh Talwar: Around 6 in the morning I got a phone call

and that was Nupur and she was shrieking.

Ajay Chadha: My wife received a call

that something happened at Rajesh's place.

So...

we drove down and we--

when we were approaching,

you could see a lot of cops there.

Ajay: Rajesh was banging his head on the wall,

Nupur was staring blankly.

A. Satish Ganesh: I recall that morning very distinctly

that I had a very important meeting coming up regarding

the Prime Minister's visit to Noida for which I had to undertake

a travel from Delhi to Lucknow.

And I had to weigh the option

whether to visit the scene of crime

or straight away head to the airport.

So I decided to take a detour.

We went to Aarushi's room and, uh...

I didn't even look at her pulse because there was nothing to do.

Satish: I tried to visit each and every

nook and corner of the house.

It was very difficult in a way because there were so many guests.

I mean maybe they're friends, maybe they're relatives,

but yet we were trying to follow a professional line.

When I interacted with Mr. Talwar,

the first thing I remember very distinctly is that, uh,

he actually posed a kind of a challenge to the local police

saying that, "Okay, you guys are wasting time.

"The servant Hemraj has already murdered my daughter.

"He has ran away.

"Rather than wasting time and doing all this,

why don't you deploy a team to go and quickly arrest him?"

Dinesh: At that time, I was just saddened that this child has gone

and to know how much she would have suffered.

How much did she suffer before she died?

So these were the things which were playing on my mind.

Dinesh: I went with Aarushi to the post-mortem house

and that post-mortem house was completely filthy, not taken care of,

I mean, I was shocked to learn

they didn't have anything called a freezer.

There was no such thing

and it was so hot so we were scared the body would,

uh, you know, start rotting.

So obviously there was an urgency to get that post-mortem done.

We did not find any sign of forceful entry into the flat.

And the key to the main door

was also lying inside the main house.

We checked the servant room where Hemraj slept,

in case if there is any weapon which might have been used

to kill Aarushi,

but we did not find anything important.

During the course of investigation,

one of the officers discovered blood stains

on the stair cases leading to the terrace.

He also discovered that there were blood prints

on the lock which was used to lock the terrace doorways.

When my officer requested the keys to the door,

everybody was passing the buck to the other that,

"Okay, it could be with Mr. X. It could be with Mr. Y."

It could be with Mrs. X," so on and so forth.

Nupur Talwar: Hemraj came to our home only seven or eight months before.

He used to take care of, uh... about everything in our house,

from cooking to getting groceries

and having everything in place because we used to

kind of, uh, be out the entire day

and then Hemraj looked after the house.

Fiza: Hemraj was extremely inconspicuous.

We only really interacted with him

when he came in and, like, served us some food.

He was really quiet

and he was just kind of in the background, you know?

Dinesh: Rajesh was in complete shock

and, uh, all he kept saying that night was, "Why did he kill her?

"He could have killed us, he could have taken the money.

"He could have taken whatever he wanted.

Why did he have to kill her?"

Reporter: A 20,000 rupee award has been announced

for anyone who has information

about the family's only full-time domestic help,

a Nepalese man who lived in a room inside the house.

Satish: Mr. Talwar had named Hemraj as the prime suspect

so it was our duty to nab the prime suspect.

I mean, on day one we were

assuming whatever is being said to us to be a gospel truth

and we did not have any reason to disbelieve

what the father of the deceased was saying.

So we spent a great bit of our energy tracking Hemraj

and I had also instructed my officers,

"Find in case if Hemraj's relatives are living in Noida."

Satish: Mr. Talwar had said that there was another Nepali

help who used to work in his clinic.

His name was Krishna

and my team informed me that they have already picked him up

from the place where he resides.

The first impression that members of the team gave

was that he's absolutely clean.

There were no stains of blood on his clothes,

nor was there any resistive wounds on his body,

which happen when you assault a person,

you also end up getting some defensive wounds on your body.

And also we failed to establish that there could have been

any motive for Krishna

to commit such a gruesome murder.

Reporter: Aarushi had spent all week planning her birthday party.

This morning, her parents found their daughter lying in a pool of blood.

The police still are trying to establish a reason behind this gruesome murder.

The post-mortem samples have been sent for further forensic tests.

Fiza: So It was actually very, very surreal...

that entire day from the morning when I found out in school...

to when I was taken from school to go to a friend's house

and we watched everything on the news...

to some point later in that day when we went to her house

and said our last goodbyes.

And they performed the last rites on her body.

It just felt very, very unreal.

We always wanted a little baby girl,

and then when Aarushi came into our lives it was, you know, like,

uh, one of the most joyful things that could have happened to us.

Nupur: Aarushi was the first ray of dawn in our lives.

She was the sunshine in our lives

and we lived for her.

Mr. K.K. Gautam was in plain clothes but he gave me a card

stating that he was a deputy superintendent of police

and, uh, so he said, "I want to see around," so I said, "Fine."

That was something completely, I mean...

it was just one more incident of disbelief.

By that time, the Talwars had left for Haridwar to do their final rites

as the Hindus do it,

and midway they were asked to come back.

And, uh, initially Mr. Talwar declined to identify the body,

but with great difficulty he agreed to do it.

And we would discover that the body was none other than Hemraj.

Reporter: Hemraj's body found ultimately by a retired police officer.

The police's failure to search

the Talwars' terrace proved a huge one.

Ajay: There were people all over.

It was like a fish market and there was no control,

there was no cordoning off by the police.

When they brought the body down, I was in the staircase landing

and there were these cops.

They couldn't even lift the body.

they were actually dragging the body down

and all body fluids were on the steps

while they were dragging it.

Vikram Singh: The sensationalism, the publicity,

the public concentration,

added to a very difficult cocktail.

This is not a pickpocketing case,

this is a murder case.

A murder case that needed to be worked out

very fairly, very professionally.

And yet at the end of the day, the possibility was

to not come up to the expectations of the media,

the people, and the political bosses.

Ajay: We had no experience, like, how to handle the media.

And we started hearing more and more stories,

and when you know the truth,

but there's no one whom you can go and tell to.

That this is actually-- we're a normal family.

Everyone was kind of upset with news channels for reporting wrong things

and giving out wrong bits of information and kind of creating,

like, a weird narrative around the entire case.

And Rajesh and Nupur Talwar did not know how to deal with the press.

And they were also advised by the police not to speak to anyone,

when on the backhand the police was constantly

giving bits of information to the press.

Investigation is proceeding on the right track.

I think we are very close to the prime suspect.

As of now...

there is nothing I can reveal you,

but I think you have to wait till tomorrow morning.

That is the official position.

We had a lot of hard times

because we had to do a lot of explaining to the media and...

the entire media and the opinion makers

were raising a lot of doubts about our capabilities.

So I was forced to conduct a press conference

where I tried to, you know, put things in perspective.

As of now we have ample evidences

on the forensic part,

but unfortunately at this moment

there is very little progress regarding the motive.

It could be an honor killing,

it could be an extreme passionate attachment to a particular person.

Satish: After initial two, three days, we had realized that

this investigation is not as simple as it looks.

One person is found dead in a room which is adjacent to those of parents,

the other person is discovered

a couple of days later on the terrace

and there is no sign of struggle

inside the bedroom where Aarushi's dead body

was found.

Mr. Rajesh Talwar initially said that

he hit the bed by about 11:15 or 11:30 p.m.

It was only after we discovered his internet activity in the night,

that his initial statement that he had hit the bed early got disproved

by the very fact that he was working on the internet

and he was very much awake when possibly this incident

was taking place inside the house.

The continuous inconsistencies

in the statements which were given by the Talwars, uh,

forced us to, you know, rethink and realign our strategy.

Uh, that was a time when we decided to, you know,

put certain things on surveillance,

understand what exactly has been

transpiring between the various members of the family.

It was very difficult because you have a complainant

who is a victim and who was now emerging as a suspect.

So it was like moving from

zero degree to almost 180 degree.

Vikram: If there are innumerable contradictions

in your conduct, in what you say,

then obviously the police will be highly suspicious

and will try to piece up

the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

And if they don't add up, obviously they will going to dig further into it.

There was tremendous pressure

to solve this in a time frame which was almost impossible.

And they did something very peculiar.

Ajay: That evening, this cop

called Bachchu Singh called us and he said,

one of the higher-up police officers wanted to meet

the family, meet Rajesh.

Once we were on the road,

they suddenly slowed down to a snail's pace

and let the media come and catch up

and film this whole thing.

We drove about three or four kilometers in Noida and then

he called us and he said,

"There is too much media attention, go back."

Ajay: Next morning, we again got a call

and there's some sort of evidence which has been found

and the cops want to discuss it.

Again, we want to discuss it somewhere where the media is not there.

Ajay: We were made to sit in a big hall.

11:00 became 12:00, became 1:00.

Then we got a call,

"There's news on the media that Rajesh has been arrested."

We said, "What crap is this?"

Because Rajesh is sitting right next to us.

"How can he be arrested?"

Immediately after that, our cell phones were taken away.

Then they started calling us into questioning one by one.

And Rajesh was the last one to go.

Female reporter: A sensational development

in the Aarushi Talwar murder case.

Dr. Rajesh Talwar, the teenager's father, has been arrested.

Man: Silence!

Today, my life has completely collapsed.

My normal happy family has been completely destroyed.

My husband is innocent and I know that,

as a mother and a wife, I know that.

All I can say is please, everyone,

everyone out there, pray for Aarushi's soul,

pray for Rajesh, pray for my family.

I have full faith in the judiciary of this country.

I have full faith in God.

Vikram: The type of pressures and constraints

in which Gurdarshan was functioning--

I mean the whole press conference should have been avoided

at that point of time.

I think he should have been more careful

in his choice of words,

in his selection of motives,

and premature disclosure of facts and evidence.

When that press conference came about, already there were...

headlines floating saying "unrequited love story

between elderly male servant and teenage girl."

I remember just being horrified.

that my friend was being spoken in such a way.

We were like urban middle class kids

pretending to be kind of Americanized.

We were so young and naive,

we weren't aware of that lens of us being sexualized objects.

When all the character assassination

and all the, kind of, bad-mouthing

about Aarushi had begun, we had a protest march.

And that protest march was basically about

the way her life and her personality

was being misconstrued.

I really felt angry and upset at the violation

of their privacy and the violation of...

um, their lives, in a sense.

Doctor, doctor!

Dinesh: It's only after Rajesh's arrest that your complete

faith in somebody suddenly gets shattered,

because you don't expect it. So that's how it happened.

We have been law-abiding citizens throughout our lives.

I have full faith that truth will prevail.

I have full faith that the-- the truth will come out.

And...

the legal system, the-- the policing system

for all its faults, I'm sure God will help us

and help them to find the right way.

That's all I'll say. Please...

I'm telling you 100 percent Rajesh is innocent.

There is no-- There is no discussion on this.

-Woman: Okay, thank you. -Man: Thank you.

My trust in the police was totally lost.

The way they investigate.

People started saying,

"You shouldn't stay in Noida. You shouldn't stay in U.P."

We couldn't believe that these people

who we are letting them see everything,

letting them know everything,

letting them come at every time they want,

giving them 100 percent cooperation and they will

play such a dirty trick, the way they arrested Rajesh.

They're framing me, I don't know.

Something like this has never happened.

You cry yourself hoarse and yet,

nobody is there to take up the investigation.

And in this case, even before the ink dries up,

CBI takes over the investigation.

What was the urgency?

Female reporter: A 25-member team led by Detective Arun Kumar

has reached Talwars in sector 21 in Noida.

The Aarushi murder case has now been taken over by the CBI.

Whole area was for the first time cordoned off.

And then the entire fleet of cars came,

and they were very professional.

Reporter: Only the residents in the area

are allowed to move in and out.

No one is being allowed in without any checks.

The question everyone is asking:

What would the CBI now be able to find?

Please.

Please.

Reporter: A team from the CBI reached the Talwar residence

looking for more clues into the double murder.

The CBI had picked up

Dr. Rajesh Talwar's compounder, Krishna, for questioning.

The police refuse to confirm if he is indeed a suspect.

But he was put through a lie-detector test,

and sources in the CBI say he was deceptive during that test.

Female reporter: CBI have arrested Rajkumar,

the domestic help of the Talwar's family friends.

Male reporter: Since the third of June,

the CBI has detained this man without a legal arrest.

Krishna has been declared neither a suspect nor a witness.

The agency wanted him to go through narco analysis,

or brain mapping, as well.

Female reporter: Narco analysis,

known more commonly as the truth serum.

100 percent scientifically reliable?

Male reporter: To extract information from the accused

when he's in a hypnotic state

is the main intent and aim behind a narco analysis test.

On day one, the forensics team had taken multiple pictures,

which we shared subsequently with the CBI teams as well.

You don't find anything of this sort,

that there are multiple beer bottles,

freshly consumed beer bottles.

There was nothing of that sort there.

The case against the servants was largely based on

the, uh, narco test of the servants

which is not final and-- and a really reliable tool.

It's only a tool,

it is not something that can conclusively

prove or not prove a particular thing.

And to base the whole conclusion on that, uh, narco test

was something that the head of that team was not comfortable with.

Female reporter: A court on the outskirts of Dehli, Ghaziabad,

will decide today whether to release

the two men currently in jail.

Vijay Mandal, the third man

accused of being involved in the murder,

was released on Saturday.

A sign that the case has collapsed.

The CBI has confirmed that it has no material evidence

against any of these three men.

The last word may not have been spoken just yet.

The Aarushi murder case has seen dramatic twists and turns.

We were all the time hearing that they have cracked the case.

And we were--

we were every day waiting

that, uh, the news would come.

So the new team taking over

came as a shocker

because why should a new team take over

when they were so close to cracking the case?

We were very clear that we wanted to, uh,

do away with all the, uh, conclusions

that had been drawn. We-- we wanted to go with a clean slate.

S. Javeed: Kaul was a hard-nosed investigator,

a person who was ready to go the extra mile

and to reach the truth.

Ajay: From the way he was working,

Kaul had made up his mind

that by hook or crook, I'm going to make sure that

the parents are-- are the people who committed the crime.

INTERVIEWER: Of the four people in the house that night,

you're the only one to actually tell your story.

MAN: That night itself, it's very tricky for the Talwars.

MAN 2:

MAN 3: I had never seen such a hostile atmosphere

ever in my practice.

MAN:

MAN 4:

MAN 3: It almost looked calculated.

Maybe even rehearsed.

WOMAN: Before they entered court,

the script was written.