Aarushi

by Avirook Sen

  The scientists who conducted the narco tests also suggested the CBI should investigate whether the Talwars had been drugged on the night of the murders—Nupur had revealed that she felt extremely drowsy that night, and although Rajesh was a late sleeper he fell fast asleep after a telephone call around 11.30 p.m.

  But with this report, Kaul would have to find other material to build his case. It would be useful if a witness turned—if a witness who had helped the Talwars’ cause gradually turned against them. Such a witness came to Kaul, in the form of K.K. Gautam.

  ***

  Gautam’s statement to the first team of the CBI led by Arun Kumar has him learning about the murders on 17 May. He doesn’t know the dentist couple, but his eye doctor—a friend of Rajesh’s brother Dinesh—insists that he visit the Talwars and he goes to the flat. There, he notices, with his policeman’s eye, that there are depressions on Hemraj’s bed that suggest three people have sat on it. That there are three glasses on the floor, and the servant’s bathroom is dirty, as if several people have used it and not flushed.

  Gautam had lied in his first statement in 2008. He may not have wanted to go into his role on that first day—helping speed up Aarushi’s post-mortem. In April 2010, about two years later, Gautam was summoned by the CBI once again. This time, A.G.L. Kaul recorded a further statement.

  Gautam now said that he had read his previous statement and would like to ‘clarify’ certain things. First, that he found out that Aarushi had been killed a day before: his eye doctor, Sushil Choudhry, had called him and asked if he could help get the post-mortem report released quickly. So far, so good. But this was followed by the claim that Dr Choudhry had also asked him whether he could use his influence as a former policeman to get the word ‘rape’ left out of the post-mortem report. Gautam told Kaul that he refused to help in this regard.

  This claim that Sushil Choudhry, a friend of a friend, called to try and use Gautam’s influence to omit the word ‘rape’ was the central part of Gautam’s testimony. In the trial court in 2012, Gautam went beyond just clarifications. His early statements had him saying he had conducted an ‘inspection’ of the premises and observed things like the depressions on Hemraj’s bed which suggested the presence of others in the flat. He told the trial court that he had said no such thing to his interviewers in 2008. He had no idea how this and other details suggesting the presence of outsiders had found their way into his statement.

  At the time that he gave his clarifications to Kaul in 2010, he had not mentioned that there were embellishments by the CBI officer recording his first statement. In fact he had said he read his earlier statement over as he gave his second, and just wished to clarify ‘some points’.

  Gautam’s turnaround was swifter than the change he underwent from mid-ranking policeman to post-retirement education entrepreneur as patron of Invertis University, formerly Invertis Institute of Management Studies. There seem to be several reasons linked to Gautam’s turnaround.

  In mid-March 2010, Kaul was picking up pieces of the puzzle that would compose his theory. During this time he spoke to Ajay Chaddha, the Talwars’ friend. Chaddha had been at the crime scene on both 16 and 17 May 2008, and Kaul asked him if he thought there was anything unusual that he noticed.

  Chaddha recounted an odd incident that took place on 17 May. The Talwars had left for Haridwar to immerse Aarushi’s ashes, and he had stayed behind in the flat. In the afternoon, K.K. Gautam arrived with a man, who was introduced as someone from a detective agency, and two women. Gautam asked Chaddha if they could see Aarushi’s room. Since the Talwars weren’t present, Chaddha politely refused. But the four people hung around, and one of the women asked to use the washroom.

  Chaddha couldn’t turn that request down, so he showed her to the guest toilet that could be accessed through the living area. Chaddha felt she was spending unusually long in the washroom, when the second woman also asked to use the toilet. With the guest toilet occupied, Chaddha was left with no choice but to ask her to use Aarushi’s. He showed her the way through Aarushi’s bedroom. The two toilets had a connecting door on the inside, which meant that you could access Aarushi’s bedroom from the guest toilet via her toilet.

  Chaddha recalled that the women may have spent between ten and fifteen minutes in the toilets. Though he had met Gautam that morning, the man from the ‘detective agency’ and the women were strangers. He wondered why they had come to the flat and what they were doing in the toilets for that long. Kaul asked him if he could recall the names of any of the three strangers; Chaddha couldn’t.

  But on the evening of 20 March 2010, while watching a television programme on News24, Chaddha recognized a panellist, Usha Thakur, as one of the women who had come to the Talwars’ with Gautam. On 22 March Chaddha emailed Kaul telling him that, though he had seen her just once, he was almost certain that it was Usha Thakur who had accompanied Gautam to the flat on 17 May 2008.

  As it happened Usha Thakur, a local social activist, had just been questioned by the CBI a few days before, on 18 March. Shortly after the murders, she had claimed that Hemraj had approached her for help five days before he was killed. He had apparently heard of her work for the victims of the Nithari killings. According to interviews Thakur gave at the time, Hemraj was very distressed about a possible threat to his life and wanted to speak to her in private. This conversation didn’t take place because she didn’t have the time that day.

  Thakur was an ardent supporter of Gurdarshan Singh’s theory about the murders, and remains one to this day. Within ten days of the killings, she told reporters that the Talwars were responsible. The CBI took note of this and wanted to know why Hemraj had gone to her, and what role she played. Her replies, as reported in the press, were exactly what she had told journalists in May 2008, just after the murders. There was no mention of her visiting the flat with K.K. Gautam. Four days later, Ajay Chaddha’s mail popped into Kaul’s inbox.

  K.K. Gautam had never said anything about returning to the flat. He said he had left once the police took over (post his heroics in the morning: finding Hemraj’s body, inspecting the crime scene, etc.). He didn’t mention anything about a detective agency or two women. That was perhaps because there wasn’t really any detective agency, just that Gautam’s friend Usha Thakur wanted a first-hand look at the scene of the crime.

  Kaul told Chaddha that he would summon Gautam to his office so Chaddha could confront him. On the afternoon of 1 April 2010, Chaddha arrived at Kaul’s second-floor office in block 4 of the CGO Complex. Gautam had also been called, but he was waiting in another room.

  Chaddha told me, ‘When Kaul called Gautam in, and I recounted his visit to the apartment, he just denied it flatly. He said he had never seen me before. I found this very strange. I told Kaul that I had no incentive to lie about such a thing. I had been asked if I thought something unusual had happened, and I thought this was unusual.’

  What made Chaddha more credible was that he had been consistent about this—investigators had recorded him telling them about the visit in 2008. Gautam now had a lot of explaining to do. What was he trying to do back in the flat? Who was the supposed detective? Why had he taken the two women there?

  In the weeks preceding the meeting between Chaddha and Gautam, the CBI had also looked into his links with Invertis University and seized his medical records from his eye doctor, Sushil Choudhry. Gautam may have retired on a government salary, but he would boast to Choudhry about the large house one of his sons had in South Africa and the sterling achievements of the other. Invertis University is a sprawling 70-odd-acre campus with an ‘avant garde’ (their description) building on the outskirts of Bareilly that attracts semi-rural ‘degree’ aspirants. Gautam’s son Umesh is the chancellor of the university, another son is the pro vice chancellor, and their wives are involved in various important capacities. The cellphone that Gautam was using was registered under the name of this institution.

  Kaul had caught Gautam lying about his sly little afternoon v
isit to the crime scene on 17 May, but he also seemed to have much more on the retired policeman. Arun Kumar had been out of the investigation for several months by now, but he received a surprise telephone call from Gautam. Kumar knew Gautam well and not just by reputation. Early in his career, the IPS officer had served in Bareilly and Gautam had been a subordinate.

  The most casual observers of the goings-on in the state of Uttar Pradesh would probably know that the universe that that state’s bureaucracy occupies has rules and mores that are different from what we may otherwise encounter. One of the traditions in the UP bureaucracy was the often reported annual ‘most corrupt officer’ contest. The public was excluded from the extensive search this required given the highly competitive field, but the award’s merit rested, in a way, in this exclusion. It was a brutal peer review exercise. The kind that one might perhaps have to go through to get published by, say, Nature. (Or, for that matter, by Penguin.)

  The Neera Yadav case spoke to the ways of that universe. She was accused of corruption, and convicted in November 2012. Which is when the Times of India said:

  Yadav, a 1971 batch IAS, became the first woman chief secretary of UP in 2005 when Mulayam [Singh Yadav] was CM. This flew in the face of IAS service rules as the CBI had filed the charge-sheet in the Noida scam. Her stint lasted barely six months, and she [was] removed on October 6, 2005, by an apex court directive. Earlier, in 1997, she was adjudged one of three most corrupt officers in UP by the UP IAS Association.

  The top echelons of the UP bureaucracy had their own traditions; those lower down had theirs, even if these were less known. There are two informal indexes that aid decisions regarding transfers and postings in the UP police. These help superior officers place the right people in the right areas. One is the ‘HLI’ or ‘high loot index’, which rates a locality. For instance, a part of town that is full of markets and businesses would be a ‘high loot index’ area. In other words, a lucrative place for a policeman to be.

  The other index is the RHI, or the ‘Robin Hood index’, and this rates personnel. A cop who has a high ‘RHI’ mark isn’t someone who, as the name might suggest, robs from the rich and gives to the poor. He simply robs. That is, extorts. When decisions regarding assignments are taken, superior officers try to keep in mind HLI and RHI and find a balance. If, for instance, a high RHI station house officer is posted to a station that’s in a low HLI area, chaos could ensue. Low HLI means fewer extortion opportunities, and a high RHI cop’s appetite would not be satisfied. So the few businesses in the area would be put under an unfair amount of pressure. Police officers from Uttar Pradesh talk about these indexes without irony.

  Gautam had immense respect for his senior. Now he sought Kumar’s advice on how to escape the situation he found himself in. He told Kumar that he was being trapped into changing his testimony.

  Kumar asked him the details. Gautam was initially reticent, but grew increasingly desperate in subsequent calls till he finally told Kumar what the problem was. What was at stake wasn’t just a lie or two about his visit to the crime scene. Kaul had confronted him with information of a deeply personal nature. He had also communicated he was eager to use it unless Gautam agreed to change his statement. Arun Kumar heard him out, and then told him there was nothing he could do to help. I checked with Gautam who confirmed the calls but was non-committal about what had happened.

  Two weeks after the encounter with Chaddha, Gautam made his fresh statement to Kaul incriminating the Talwars. There was no further probe by the CBI on his alleged visit and Kaul had got another piece of the puzzle whose complete picture would be the indictment of the Talwars.

  Gautam’s companions’ visit to the two washrooms was a reminder of something else that was seldom recalled during the investigation and the trial. This was that the door to Aarushi’s bedroom was not the only way to enter her room. The guest washroom allowed access to her toilet, and thereafter into her bedroom. To this day, very few people are aware of this fact. But does it not open up the possibility of an assailant entering Aarushi’s room through her toilet without having a key—or being ‘allowed in’?

  ***

  In the third week of May 2010, the scene shifted to Dehradun, where Neelabh Kishore had summoned the Talwars. In the course of this conversation, Nupur Talwar told Kishore that in 2009, before the golf kit was seized, she and a family friend, Ajay Chaddha, had gone to the Jalvayu Vihar flat to supervise pest control and do some cleaning. The Talwars had moved to Azad Apartments near IIT Delhi, and their old home had been lying vacant and neglected for many months. As they emptied a loft, said Nupur, they found a golf club, some of Aarushi’s toys and some junk. The club was carried back and placed along with the others in Rajesh’s kit. At the time, it had been over a year since Rajesh had last played golf.

  Three things happened in quick succession. The first was a report in the Pioneer dated 24 May quoting ‘top-ranking’ and other nameless CBI sources, who were all convinced that the Talwars had committed the crime. In journalistic parlance we call such a story a trial balloon, and this was the first one that mapped out the CBI’s new case. This story, with its various inaccuracies, read less like a news report and more like a charge sheet and did the job of reviving interest in the case, putting the CBI in a positive light and cementing public perception of the Talwars as the killers.

  The story contained the same wrong information about Hemraj’s blood being found in Aarushi’s room—on her pillow. It had other shades of Dahiya: ‘Somebody was desperate to ensure that the crime did not look like a case of honour killing,’ a CBI official told the paper.

  It also said that the victims were hit by ‘a golf club, or similar object’. Another detail was added when the Pioneer reported that a golf club was ‘missing’: ‘Sources said that the CBI was looking for a missing golf club which could be Talwar’s. “So far he has denied that any club from his golf set is missing, but we are not convinced,” said a CBI official.’

  It is difficult to say whether this was a mistake the paper made or whether the CBI official, who was the source of so much information, wasn’t aware that Rajesh Talwar’s golf kit—with all its 12 clubs in it—had been seized by the agency in October the previous year.

  In the public mind, however, an impression had been created that Rajesh Talwar was behaving suspiciously about his golf clubs—he was hiding one of them.

  This worked very well for Kaul as he segued into his next step. This was yet another interview with Dr Sunil Dohare. His fifth statement to the CBI was recorded four days after the Pioneer story appeared and was still fresh in everyone’s mind.

  Kaul asked Dohare whether a golf club could have killed Aarushi. Dohare answered: ‘The injury on the forehead of Aarushi was V-shaped and had been made with a heavy blunt instrument. It is possible that the injury could have been caused by the golf club.’

  There was just a little more work for the CBI to do, now that suspicion had been raised about a golf club and two experts, Dahiya and Dohare, had agreed that it could be the murder weapon. This task centred on the golf club found in the loft, which Nupur Talwar had mentioned in Dehradun.

  Kaul (or ‘Hemraj’) wrote to Ajay Chaddha on the matter, and received a detailed reply on 1 June 2010. Chaddha corroborated what Nupur had said. That they sorted the stuff, discarded some things, placed some back and kept the golf club, an iron, aside.

  He also wrote:

  I clearly remember, looking at the head of the golf stick to see whether any blood or such stuff was there but it did not appear as there was anything. Later on Rajesh visited the house and we mentioned to him about the stick, to which he remarked that the whole golf kit had been lying in the loft and one of the sticks may have got left behind. He too had a look at the sticks and had the same view as us.

  To summarize, Rajesh Talwar had a golf set of 12 clubs which he kept in a loft near the drawing room of his apartment. At some point, when the golf kit was being taken out, one club was left behind, but it wasn’t an
absence sorely felt by Rajesh Talwar since he was not an advanced player of the game. A few months before the murder, he used two clubs and then had them sent back with his driver Umesh for Hemraj to keep with the rest of the kit. Some months after the murder, while cleaning out the flat, Nupur found the 12th club and had it put back with the kit. Thus, when the CBI seized the golf kit, it had the entire set.

  Kaul saw the whole story differently: Chaddha was an old friend of the Talwars, and meant well, but this email was spun as proof that the Talwars had hidden an incriminating piece of evidence. On the record, there is nothing to show that the Talwars were asked about the golf clubs before 29 October 2009, when the CBI told them the kit had to be handed over. But the impression created in the media, and carried through to the trial, was that the failure to report the ‘recovery’ of the club when the flat was being cleaned in early 2009 was an act of concealment.

  It is reasonable to assume that even if the fatal blows were struck with a golf club, it would have to be a particular golf club. There are four types of clubs: the driver, the wood, the iron and the putter. Each has a distinct shape, with the driver and wood having large heads, and the putter having a flat head. Each bears a number; in fact there are eight irons in a set, each with the head at a lower angle. So was the club found in the loft the murder weapon? What marking did it bear?

  The CFSL said the examination of the 12 golf clubs, under a microscope, ‘reveal[s] that negligible amount of soil was found sticking in the cavity of the numbers engraved at the bottom portion of the head of the golf clubs marked exhibits 3 and 5’ in comparison to the soil found on all the other clubs. One of the two ‘cleaner’ clubs was a wood, the other was an iron.