Aarushi Talwar case: Defence rejects CBI claim that Talwars dragged Hemraj's body to terrace

The defence in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case on Wednesday rejected as "totally baseless" CBI's "dragging theory" in which the probe agency claims that the dentist couple had hidden the domestic help's body on the terrace after brutally hitting him with a golf club.

Dr Rajender Singh, the then chief scientific officer of Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in New Delhi, had in November 2010 conducted a dummy test of the crime scene at Rajesh and Nupur Talwar's L-32 Jalvayu Vihar residence with a team of CFSL and CBI officials, defence counsel Tanveer Ahmed Mir today submitted before a special CBI court here.

The test was conducted to ascertain whether it was physically possible for two adult people of normal built to wrap an adult body in a bedsheet and take it upstairs to the terrace and to compare the blood pattern in such a scenario with the photos of the spot taken just after the crime.

Mir today argued that the dummy test was not conducted in Aarushi's room, but it was carried out on staircase and terrace.

Countering CBI's claim that Hemraj was brutally hit by Rajesh after finding him with Aarushi in a compromising position, Mir said the dummy test was conducted only on the basis of photographs of the crime scene.

"Why was this test not conducted in Aarushi's room?" he asked.

It was physically impossible for Talwars to take Hemraj's body upstairs to the terrace, he submitted.

For the test, a CBI official was wrapped in a bedsheet and was dragged to terrace by two CBI male officials. "Why didn't the the probe agency engage a woman for this test despite the fact that Napur, as per CBI's claims, along with her husband dragged Hemraj's body to the terrace?" Mir asked.

Mir said photography and videography of the dummy test was done by the CBI, but neither the photographs nor the video recording has been submitted the court as evidence.

"Why didn't the probe agency submit these details to the court to prove its theory?" he asked.

CBI knew that if it did the same, this theory would get demolished before the court, Mir argued. 

The defence lawyer said CFSL experts Rajender Singh, M S Dahiya and Noida police official Dataram Nanoria, in their statements, had given different directions in which the body was dragged.

Dr Rajender Singh told the court that some marks were created as a result of the dragging and were similar to the marks which had appeared in pictures clicked by the local police after they were first called to the house.

The defence lawyer also countered CBI's claim that the Talwars consumed whisky after the murders as the Noida police had seized a bottle of scotch whisky from the dining table of Talwars' residence and DNAs of Aarushi and Hemraj were found on it.

He claimed, "No fingerprints of Rajesh and Nupur were detected from the bottle. Finger-print expert AD Shah,however, found some fingerprints on bottle, but they didn't match with the dentist couple."

On May 16, 2008, around 13 persons, including Noida police officials, Talwars' neighbours, visited dentist couple's home, but only three persons-- the then Noida SDM Sanjay Chauhan, Dr Rohit Kocchar, Dr Rajiv Varshney -- noticed something different there, he said.

"Statements of Chauhan, Kocchar and Varshney contradict each other. Chauhan said that he noticed blood spots or wiped blood spots on stairs while Noida police sub-inspector Sunita Rana said in her statement that stairs were clean and didn't have any blood spots or any wiped blood spots there," the counsel said, adding "in poly-light test, blood spot was not detected on stairs."

The court has fixed November 7 for further arguments.