The 2008 Noida double murder case refers to the unsolved murders of 13-year-old girl Aarushi Talwar and 45-year-old man Yam Prasad "Hemraj" Banjade, a live-in domestic worker employed by her family. The two were killed on the night of 15–16 May 2008 at Aarushi's home in Noida, India. The case aroused public interest as a whodunit story. The sensational media coverage, which included salacious allegations against Aarushi and the suspects, was criticised by many as a trial by media.
When Aarushi's body was discovered in her bedroom on 16 May, Hemraj was missing at the time, and was considered the main suspect. The next day, Hemraj's partially decomposed body was discovered on the terrace. The police were heavily criticized for failing to secure the crime scene immediately. After ruling out former domestic servants of the family, the police treated Aarushi's parents—Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar—as the prime suspects. The police suspected that Rajesh had murdered the victims after finding them in an "objectionable" position, or because Rajesh's alleged extra-marital affair had led to his blackmail by Hemraj and a confrontation with Aarushi. The Talwars' family and friends accused the police of framing the Talwars in order to cover up the botched-up investigation. The case was then transferred to the CBI, which exonerated the parents and suspected the Talwars' assistant Krishna Thadarai and two domestic servants—Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal. Based on the 'narco' interrogation conducted on the three men, the CBI assumed that they had killed Aarushi after an attempted sexual assault, and Hemraj for being a witness. The CBI was accused of using dubious methods to extract a confession, and all three men were released for lack of evidence.
In 2009, the CBI handed over the investigation to a new team, which recommended closing the case. Based on circumstantial evidence, it named Rajesh Talwar as the sole suspect, but refused to charge him because of critical gaps in evidence. The parents opposed the closure report, calling CBI's suspicion of Rajesh Talwar baseless. Subsequently, a special CBI court rejected the CBI's claim that there was not enough evidence, and ordered proceedings against the Talwars. In November 2013, the parents were convicted and sentenced to Life imprisonment, amid criticism that the judgment was based on weak evidence. The Talwars successfully challenged the decision in the Allahabad High Court, which acquitted them in 2017. The case remains unsolved.
Background
Aarushi Talwar (24 May 1994 – 16 May 2008) was a 13-year-old student at the Delhi Public School. She was the daughter of a dentist couple, Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar. The family lived in an apartment in Sector 25 (Jalvayu Vihar) of Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Rajesh and Nupur practiced together at their clinic in Sector 27 of Noida. They also saw patients at the Fortis Hospital, where Rajesh headed the dental department. In addition, Rajesh taught at the ITS Dental College in Greater Noida. Anita and Praful Durrani, another dentist couple and close family friends of the Talwars, lived in the same city. The couple shared the Noida clinic with the Talwars: Rajesh and Anita worked at the clinic in the mornings (9 am–12 pm), while Praful and Nupur worked there in the evenings (5 pm–7 pm). The Durranis and the Talwars also shared a clinic in Hauz Khas area of Delhi.
Yam Prasad Banjade, better known as Hemraj, was the Talwars' live-in domestic worker and cook. He belonged to Dharapani village in the Arghakhanchi District of Nepal.
Events preceding the murders
The murders on the night of 15–16 May 2008 were preceded by the following events:
- On 15 May 2008, Nupur Talwar worked at her clinic from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm. She picked up Aarushi from school at 1:30 pm and returned to their Jalvayu Vihar apartment. Nupur's sister-in-law Vandana Talwar (wife of Rajesh's brother Dinesh Talwar) joined them for lunch. Then Nupur and Vandana left, while Aarushi stayed at home. Nupur worked at the Fortis Hospital from 4:30 pm to 7:00 pm. She returned to the apartment around 7:30 pm.
- Rajesh Talwar taught at the ITS Dental College from 8:45 am to 3:30 pm and then attended patients at the clinic until 8:30 pm.
- Rajesh and his driver Umesh Sharma returned to Jalvayu Vihar around 9:30 pm.
- Sharma dropped Rajesh in front of the apartment building and drove away to park the car at Nupur's parents' house, which was within walking distance.
- Sharma returned to the Talwar residence around 9:40 pm to hand over the car keys and Rajesh's bag to Hemraj Banjade, who had cooked dinner for the family.
- Sharma saw Nupur and Aarushi near the dining table and Rajesh coming out of his bedroom. He was the last known outsider to see Aarushi and Hemraj alive.
- According to the Talwars, after the dinner, they went to Aarushi's room and gave her a Sony DSC-W130 digital camera. The camera had arrived earlier that day via courier and had been received by Hemraj. Rajesh originally planned to give it to Aarushi on her birthday (24 May), but Nupur persuaded Rajesh to give it to Aarushi that day as an early birthday surprise.
- Aarushi clicked several photographs of herself and her parents, the last one at 10:10 pm.
- Subsequently, Aarushi's parents retired to their room, while Aarushi remained in her room.
- According to the parents, around 11 pm, Rajesh asked Nupur to switch on the internet router, which was in Aarushi's room. When Nupur came to Aarushi's room, the teenager was reading Chetan Bhagat's The 3 Mistakes of My Life. Nupur switched on the router and returned to her own room.
- Around this time, Rajesh answered a call from the US on the landline phone (kept in the couple's room). This indicates that the ringer was not silent.
- Rajesh then surfed some stock market and dentistry websites, and sent an e-mail. He visited an e-mail site at 11:41:53 pm, which is when the desktop and the laptop show the last internet usage.
- Around midnight, Aarushi's friend Anmol tried calling her on her mobile as well as the Talwar residence's landline. The calls were not answered. Around 12:30 am, he sent her an SMS message: This message was not received by Aarushi's phone.
- The Internet router was used for the last time at 12:08 am. Based on this, CBI inferred that Rajesh was online until 12:08 am.
- The exact sequence of events between midnight and 6:00 am could not be determined by the investigators with certainty (conjecture). According to their post-mortem reports, Aarushi and Hemraj were killed between 12:00 am and 1:00 am.
The apartment
The 1300 sq. ft. apartment had 3 bedrooms (including servants' room), a drawing-dining room and a servants' quarters, where Hemraj slept. Rajesh and Nupur slept in the master bedroom, while Aarushi slept in an adjacent room. Hemraj's room had a separate entry from outside the apartment; it also opened into the apartment from inside.
The entrance to the Talwars' apartment at Jalvayu Vihar had three doors: the outermost grill gate, a middle mesh door, and the innermost wooden door. The middle door and the wooden door were attached to the same frame Hemraj's room had two doors - one door opened inside the apartment, and the other door was located between the two grill doors. The Talwars had the outermost gate removed a year after the murders.
Discovery of Aarushi's body
On 16 May 2008, the family's maid Bharati Mandal (35) rang their doorbell around 6 am. She had been employed six days earlier. Every day, Hemraj Banjade would open the door for her, as Nupur and Rajesh were late risers, but this time, nobody opened the door even after she rang a second time. She later stated that she tried pushing the outermost gate, but it did not open.
After Bharati rang the doorbell a third time, Nupur opened the innermost wooden door. Speaking through the mesh of the middle grill door, she told Bharati that this door was locked from outside. She asked Bharati about the whereabouts of Hemraj. When Bharati said that she had no idea, Nupur remarked that Hemraj must have gone outside to fetch milk and must have locked the door from outside. She asked Bharati to wait outside until Hemraj returned. Bharati did not want to wait and asked Nupur to throw the duplicate keys. Nupur asked her to go downstairs so that she could throw the keys to her from the balcony.
Nupur then called Hemraj's mobile phone, but the call was abruptly cut. When she tried calling him again, the phone appeared to have been switched off. When Bharati reached downstairs, Nupur asked her to go back and check if the door was just latched, not locked. Bharati insisted that Nupur throw the keys anyway, so that she wouldn't have to take the stairs again, in case the door was locked. Nupur then threw the keys down to Bharati.
According to the Talwars, by this time, Rajesh also woke up. He entered the living room and saw a near-empty Scotch whisky bottle on the dining table, which surprised him. He asked Nupur who had kept the bottle there, and then, alarmed, asked her to check Aarushi's room. Aarushi's room had a self-locking door, and it would generally be locked. It could be opened only from inside or from outside with a key. But the couple found it unlocked on that morning. When they entered the room, they saw Aarushi's dead body lying on her bed. Rajesh started screaming, while Nupur remained silent (due to shock, according to her).
Meanwhile, Bharati returned to the outermost gate: she pushed it, and it opened without the key. She found that the middle door was latched, but not locked. She opened the latch and walked in. When she entered the apartment, she saw Rajesh and Nupur crying. Nupur asked her to come inside Aarushi's room. Bharati stood at the entrance of the room, as Nupur walked inside. Aarushi's body lay on her bed; it was covered with a flannel blanket. Nupur pulled the blanket, and Bharati saw that Aarushi's throat was slit. Both the parents blamed Hemraj Banjade for Aarushi's murder in front of the maid. Bharati walked out of the apartment to inform the neighbours. She returned to the house and asked the Talwars if they wanted her to do the daily household chores. When they said no, she moved on to work in other households.
The Talwars called their family and friends. Puneesh Rai Tandon, a neighbour who lived one floor below the Talwars, asked the Jalvayu Vihar security guard Virendra Singh to inform the police. By the time the police arrived, there were 15 people in the living room and 5-6 people in the Talwars' bedroom; only Aarushi's room was vacant. The crime scene had been "completely trampled upon". The story of a murder in an affluent neighbourhood also attracted media attention, with personnel gathered around the house by 8 am.
Hemraj Banjade as the suspect
On 16 May, the missing servant Hemraj Banjade was the prime suspect. In his police complaint, Rajesh blamed Hemraj for his daughter's murder. He repeatedly told the police to pursue Hemraj instead of wasting time in the apartment, and offered them ₹ 25,000 to rush to Hemraj's native village in Nepal. The police suspected that Hemraj entered Aarushi's room in an inebriated state after consuming Scotch whisky, and tried to sexually assault her. When she resisted, he killed her with a kukri (a Nepali knife). The police announced a reward of ₹ 20,000 for tips leading to his capture.
Aarushi's body was taken for post-mortem around 8:30 am by two Uttar Pradesh Police constables. Rajesh's brother Dinesh Talwar, his driver Umesh Sharma and his childhood friend Ajay Chadha accompanied the constables. Around 1 pm, the body was brought home and placed on ice slabs in the living room. It was taken for cremation at the Antim Niwas crematorium around 4 pm. According to the Talwars, who were later accused of being in a hurry to cremate the body, it was decomposing fast, and the family elders were pushing for cremation. In addition, the police confirmed that the body was not needed for any further examination.
The police later alleged that the Talwars' domestic staff showed undue haste in cleaning Aarushi's room. In the Talwars' defence, their compounder Vikas Sethi told the court that he had received the permission to clean the house from the police personnel and a female constable present on the crime scene.
A part of Aarushi's blood-stained mattress was cut out and sent to the forensics lab along with her pillow, bed sheet and clothes. Vikas Sethi later testified that he, along with three others, tried to dump the remaining part of the mattress on the terrace, but found it locked. An old lady then told him to put the mattress on the neighbouring terrace. Rajesh's driver Sharma then asked the neighbour Puneesh Tandon for the key to his terrace. Earlier, at 4 pm also, Sharma had asked Tandon for the key, saying that he needed to dump the ice brought for Aarushi's body. This time, Tandon opened the terrace himself. Sharma, Sethi and two others dragged the mattress to his terrace. Tandon then locked the terrace door. None of them noticed the body of Hemraj, which was lying on the adjacent terrace, separated by a grilled wall.
According to CBI, when the post-mortem report was being written between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on 16 May, a series of telephone conversations had happened between Dinesh Talwar, Dr. Sushil Chaudhury (Dinesh's friend and the chairman of the ICARE Eye Hospital) and K K Gautam (retired DSP). K K Gautam, while deposing at the CBI court later in 2012, stated that Chaudhury had requested him to get any references to a sexual assault removed from the post-mortem report, but he refused to oblige. He told the court that he had mentioned this incident to the first CBI team, but they left out this information from their records.
Discovery of Hemraj's body
On the morning of 17 May, the visitors to the Talwars' house noticed some bloodstains on the terrace door handle. Rajesh's former colleagues Rajiv Kumar Varshney and Rohit Kochhar later told the police that they saw bloodstains on the terrace door, its lock and the staircase leading to the terrace. While visiting the Talwars' house, Varshney had taken the stairs to the terrace. However, several other witnesses testified that they had not noticed any bloodstains on the staircase in the morning. These witnesses included several police officers, Umesh Sharma, Puneesh Rai Tandon, Bharati Mandal and Vikas Sethi. Thus, the bloodstains might have been left by the group that tried to take Aarushi's mattress to the Talwars' terrace.