On the 16th of May in 2008, Bharti Mandal arrived at her employers’ gate at 6am, ready to start her chores for the day. Bharti, 35, worked as a housemaid for Dr. Nupur Talwar and Dr. Rajesh Talwar – a prominent dentist couple based in Noida, Uttar Pradesh.
Minutes after entering her employers’ compound, a horrified Bharti rushed out again seeking assistance from neighbors. She had just seen her employers’ 13 year old daughter, Arushi, lying lifeless on her bed with her throat slit.
The ensuing investigation into Arushi Talwar’s murder would grip India and fuel tabloid speculation that triggered public outrage.
The discovery made on 16th May 2008
The singular factor that prompted Bharti Mandal to rush out of her employers’ house upon sighting Arushi’s lifeless body was probably their unusual behaviors that fateful day.
Bharti arrived at her employers’ home at 6.01am, but did not expect to find Dr. Nupur Talwar or Dr. Rajesh Talwar awake. She would later tell police officers that both Dr. Nupur Talwar and Dr. Rajesh Talwar usually woke up later because they had evening shifts.
When Bharti arrived at the Talwar residence, she expected Hemraj Banjade –another servant- to let her through the outermost gate as he usually did. Hemraj, though, was not at his post.
Dr. Nupur Talwar appeared behind the inner grill door after Bharti had rang the outermost gate door thrice. She asked if Bharti had spotted Hemraj Banjade on her way to the house.
When Bharti responded that she had not, Dr. Nupur Talwar said that Hemraj had probably locked the gate from outside on his way to get milk. Through the inner grill door, she asked Bharti to wait until he returned.
Bharti was unwilling to wait and reminded her employer that there was a duplicate set of keys for the house. Bharti requested Dr. Nupur Talwar to stand on the balcony and throw this set of keys to her.
Dr. Nupur Talwar asked Bharti to go downstairs so that she could easily catch the keys when they were thrown from the balcony. While Bharti was going downstairs, Dr. Nupur Talwar attempted to call Hemraj Banjade’s phone.
She would later tell police officers that this call was abruptly cut. When she attempted to call Hemraj Banjade’s phone again, it was turned off. By this time, Bharti had reached downstairs and Dr. Nupur Talwar threw the duplicate keys to her.
Dr. Nupur Talwar would later tell police officers that the commotion caused by her exchange with Bharti Mandal woke Dr. Rajesh Talwar. Dr. Nupur Talwar walked back into the house after throwing the duplicate set of keys to Bharti.
She reached the living room just as her husband was entering it. Dr. Rajesh Talwar later testified that he spotted a Scotch whisky bottle on a table and asked his wife about it. Suddenly alarmed, Dr. Rajesh Talwar asked his wife to check on their daughter.
Arushi, the 13 year old daughter of Dr. Nupur Talwar and Dr. Rajesh Talwar, had a bedroom with a self-locking door. When inside her bedroom, Arushi could open her door from inside for anyone wanting to speak to her.
Moreover, people outside the room could only enter the room using a key. That morning, Arushi’s parents found her door unlocked and so did not have to use the key to enter the room.
Rajesh would later recall that he began to scream when he saw his dead daughter. Dr. Nupur Talwar said that she was rendered speechless by the terrible sight.
Bharti Mandal was still outside, negotiating her way through various gates to get to the apartment. Bharti found that she need not have asked for the keys to both the outermost and inner gates as neither of them was locked.
The outermost gate gave way after Bharti pushed against it. The latch used to hold the inner middle gate in place made it seem locked even though it was not. Bharti lifted the latch, opened the middle gate, and walked towards the apartment.
Bharti walked into the apartment to find both Dr. Nupur Talwar and Dr. Rajesh Talwar crying. Nupur led her to the entrance of Arushi’s room, walked to Arushi’s bed, and pulled back a flannel exposing her daughter’s dead body with its throat slit.
“Look what Hemraj has done…” both parents cried. Shaken by this spectacle, Bharti rushed outside to seek help from the neighbors.
The discovery of the Missing Suspect’s Corpse
Bharti Mandal’s screams about the dead Arushi brought more than 10 people to the crime scene.
By the time police officers arrived at the apartment in Sector 25 – Jalvayu Vihar, which is where Dr. Nupur Talwar and Dr. Rajesh Talwar lived, neighbors and curious bystanders had walked all over the crime scene and even moved furniture within the apartment.
That morning, Noida Superintendent Mahesh Mishra arrived at the Talwars’ apartment and asked Rajesh to open the terrace door. He wanted to check for possible escape routes or clues to Arushi Talwar’s murder.
The Talwars’ terrace was joined to neighbor Puneesh Tandon’s property. Its door was locked from the outside that day. This was unusual as it was rarely locked before.
Neighbor Rohit Kochhar testified that a policeman asked Dr. Rajesh Talwar for the key to the terrace. Rajesh went inside the house and stayed there for a long time. He did not come back outside.
Moreover, Rajesh filed a police complaint the same day. He named his servant Hemraj as the killer and urged officers to search for Hemraj right away. Rajesh even suggested going to Hemraj’s village in Nepal. He offered a 25,000 rupees cash reward to “expedite” the manhunt.
Noida police officers were still at the crime scene and checked Arushi’s bedroom. Neighbors and family members like Rajesh’s father-in-law supported the suggestion that Hemraj fled after killing Arushi Talwar.
Arushi Talwar’s autopsy took place on May 16, 2008. Dr. Sunil Dohre performed it at Gautam Budh Nagar District Hospital in Noida. The autopsy report noted that the victim had suffered a blunt injury on her forehead above the left eye from a heavy object.
It left a U/V-shaped dent in her left parietal bone. There was also a second sharp cut that went across the victim’s neck and cut major blood vessels.
This cut was performed with precision resembling surgical skill. Arushi Talwar’s body was cremated with family approval later that same day at Antim Niwas.
Hemraj Banjade’s body was found the next day on May 17, 2008, around 10:30 a.m. His body was found on the terrace or rooftop of the Talwars’ apartment.
Visitors that included family friends and Dr. Rajesh Talwar’s workmates like Rajiv Kumar Varshney and Rohit Kochhar saw blood on the terrace door handle, lock, and stairs that morning. They then tried to open the terrace door.
The visitors checked with the Talwars’ next door neighbor, Puneesh Tandon, who shared the terrace with them. The neighbor did not have the key to the door of the terrace, though. Noida’s Head Constable Dataram Nauneria, who was at the scene, broke the lock.
That is when he saw bloody drag marks leading to Hemraj Banjade’s body. The body was decaying and lay in a pool of blood. Dr. Rajesh Talwar saw his dead servant but told Head Constable Nauneria that he could not determine if the body was really Hemraj Banjade’s because it was putrefied.
A friend of Hemraj later acknowledged that it was indeed Hemraj Banjade’s body. Dr. Naresh Raj conducted an autopsy on Banjade’s body that night.
He said Hemraj Banjade died between midnight and 1 a.m. on the night of May 15-16. Banjade’s autopsy report also showed that he suffered fatal wounds similar to those effected on Arushi Talwar.
After the discovery of Hemraj Banjade’s body on the Talwars’ terrace, social worker Usha Thakur would tell police officers that Hemraj told her he feared for his life five days before his death.
Hemraj Banjade’s wife, Khumkala Banjade, also told police officers that 15 days before his death, her husband called her in Nepal from a public call office in India. He told her of the threats he regularly received from Dr. Rajesh Talwar who accused him of telling strangers about the Talwars’ family secrets.
Khumkala Banjade said that her husband had revealed that Dr. Rajesh Talwar was short-tempered. Due to these circumstances, Hemraj Banjade was looking forward to searching for a new job. Khumkala Banjade believed her husband to be telling the truth because he had not sent money home since December, 2007.
After finding his body, Noida’s police officers stopped viewing Hemraj as the only suspect. The public criticized them for not checking the terrace sooner despite dried blood stains on the door opening to the terrace.
Police officers now suspected the deaths of Arushi and Hemraj to be an inside job. Some officers publicly stated that Dr. Rajesh Talwar probably killed Arushi and Hemraj over an affair between them.
On May 23, 2008, Noida police officers arrested Dr. Rajesh Talwar. He became the main suspect in the murders of Arushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjade. The police claimed that Rajesh found Arushi in a “compromising situation” with Hemraj and then killed them both in rage.
Police officers claimed that the bodies of Arushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjade had surgery-like cuts in the neck region that could only have been created by trained medical professionals. Dr. Rajesh Talwar’s arrestupset the Talwar family.
They claimed that it was a frame-up. Dr. Nupur Talwar publicly appealed for help and requested the Uttar Pradesh government for an independent investigation.
The police arrest Krishna Thadarai, Rajkumar, and Vijay Mandal as suspects
Dr. Nupur Talwar’s efforts triggered a public outcry and media pressure grew strong. On June 1, 2008, the Uttar Pradesh government sent the Arushi Talwar case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The CBI aimed for a fair probe as they noticed that Noida’s local police had no DNA and fingerprint proofs of Dr. Rajesh Talwar’s guilt. The first CBI team chosen to oversee the case in 2008 began to investigate the Talwars’ drivers, ex-servants, and clinic staff.
These included Krishna Thadarai, Rajkumar, and Vijay Mandal, who was a clinical medic working at the Talwars’ clinic. CBI officers claimed that these three individuals knew the Talwars’ apartment and clinic well, and knew their daily habits.
Thadarai, Rajkumar, and Mandal might have motives like anger due to job loss or greed for cash. CBI officers hypothesized that the three suspects entered the Talwars’ flat on the night of May 15 to 16, killed Arushi and Hemraj, and tried to fake the scene to fool police officers.
Moreover, CBI personnel did not file charges against the three suspects in 90 days. On 12th September 2008, Krishna, Rajkumar, and Vijay Mandal were permitted to post bail. The CBI team had found no solid proof against them. The investigation’s focus returned to the Talwars.
The use of ‘truth serum’ on Dr. Rajesh Talwar
In 2009, the CBI authorized a second team to investigate the Arushi-Hemraj case. This team used mind and science tests like polygraphs, narco-analysis, and brain-mapping techniques on Rajesh Talwar, Nupur Talwar, and the ex-staff. These tests first yielded unclear results. In the second round, the tests showed mixed results.
The polygraph test results showed Dr. Rajesh Talwar was lying, but Dr. Nupur Talwar’s test showed mixed results. Courts would later declare the Talwars’ narco-analysis and brain-mapping tests unfit for use. The Supreme Court also determined that these tests cannot prove guilt.
On 29 December 2010, the CBI filed a closure report before the Special Judicial Magistrate (CBI) in Ghaziabad. They requested that the case be closed due to insufficient evidence.
The CBI report cleared all past outsider suspects like drivers, ex-servants, and clinic staff. Moreover, they named Rajesh and Nupur Talwar as the top suspects but admitted that they lacked material and forensic proof of this fact.
The dentist Dr. Rajan Sood, Arushi’s uncle, made a public petition against the CBI’s closure report. Sood argued that the Talwars’ should face trial even if the evidence against them was weak.
The 2011 Trial
On 9 February 2011, the Special Judicial Magistrate in Ghaziabad rejected the CBI closure report. The court said the proof, though weak, showed a basic case against the Talwars.
It turned the report into charges and ordered a trial. The court called Rajesh and Nupur Talwar to face murder charges for Arushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjade. The Ghaziabad CBI trial against Dr. Rajesh and Dr. Nupur Talwar started slow with indirect proof but grew into fights between lower court, Supreme Court, and Allahabad High Court.
The couple went in and out of jail. The trial began in February 2011 at the Special CBI Court in Ghaziabad. The Supreme Court backed the order for a case against the Talwars and would not drop the summons.
The trial ran for months on witness talk as it leaned on indirect proof. On 24 November 2013, the Ghaziabad court found Rajesh and Nupur Talwar guilty under IPC Sections 302, 201, and 34.
The court said they planned the murders of Arushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjade and hid proof after. On 25 November 2013, the court sentenced both Rajesh and Nupur Talwar to life in prison.
Both of the Talwars appealed their sentences to Allahabad High Court and Supreme Court. They said the proof presented by the CBI was weak and guessed at.
The 2018 acquittal of Dr. Nupur Talwar and Dr. Rajesh Talwar
The Supreme Court left the final call to the Allahabad High Court. That court took up the case from 2016 to 2017. It examined the CBI probes, the Ghaziabad conviction, and the quality of indirect proof closely. In late 2017, the Allahabad High Court cleared Dr. Rajesh and Dr. Nupur Talwar of all accusations.
The Allahabad High Court said the state failed to prove guilt beyond doubt. It held that the CBI’s “inside-job” was based on guesses, not facts. Justices B.K. Narayana and A.K. Mishra of the Allahabad High Court threw out the 2013 Ghaziabad life sentence for Dr. Rajesh Talwa and Dr. Nupur Talwar.
The court, in its 260-270-page ruling, asserted that the CBI could not prove Rajesh found Arushi in a compromising act with Hemraj and killed them both in anger.
The court also elaborated that the police did not cordon off the crime scene and so could not use forensics to prove the Talwars’ guilt. On 13 October 2017, Dr. Rajesh Talwa and Dr. Nupur Talwar left Dasna jail after serving about four years.