In a major development in the 2008 Aarushi-Hemraj murder case, the Allahabad High Court on Thursday acquitted Rajesh and Nupur Talwar of brutally murdering their daughter Aarushi Talwar and domestic help Hemraj.
The verdict came four years after Aarushi's parents were convicted for killing their only daughter.
On May 16, 2008, 14-year-old Aarushi was found dead in her bedroom in Noida's Jal Vayu Vihar flat and her throat slit with surgical precision.
The family's domestic help Hemraj was found killed on the terrace. The dentist couple was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment in 2013. They had appealed against their conviction.
Here are the top developments of the case so far:
1. The Allahabad High Court acquitted the Talwars of killing their daughter and their domestic help Hemraj saying 'no chain of evidence' could be established.
2. A division bench of the court comprising justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra upheld the appeals by the Talwars against the Ghaziabad CBI court order sentencing them to life imprisonment. The court questioned the poor investigation and Talwars were given 'the benefit of doubt'.
3. While reacting after the judgement, mother Nupur Talwar reportedly said: We have got justice. Nupur Talwar, who is lodged in Ghaziabad's Dasna jail along with her husband Rajesh, was watching the proceedings on TV.
4. The teenager's grandfather BG Chitnis, a former group captain in the Indian Air Force (IAF) and father of Nupur Talwar expressed relief over the judgement. Chitnis said he "is emotionally drained after hearing the decision. He and his family said they were grateful for the acquittal; we always knew that they were not guilty".
5. Vandana Talwar, Aarushi's aunt also expressed gratitude towards the verdict. "We are deeply relieved and grateful to God for the verdict. It's been an exhausting journey for us and it has been very trying time for our family. We have suffered a lot for almost ten years," Vandana said.
6. The CBI, however, said, "We are waiting for the copy of the judgement. We will decide our next course of action after studying it."
7. Former CBI Director AP Singh refused to hold the parents innocent. "It is not really a clean chit because it says benefit of doubt and not that they are innocent," Singh told ANI.
8. Singh further said, "Only weakness we found was that scene of crime had been badly tampered on the 1st day itself".
9. Meanwhile, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said that the police has made a "total dog's breakfast" of the investigation on Twitter. "Don't know who killed #Arushi & will probably never know but what I do know is the police made a total dogs breakfast of the investigation (sic)," Abdullah said on Twitter.
10. Avirook Sen, the author of the book based on the 2008 murder of Aarushi Talwar and domestic help Hemraj welcomed the court's decision. "I am glad that the wrong that was done in Ghaziabad has been corrected. It has been reversed today by the honourable High Court," Sen was quoted as saying by a news agency.
11. “On November 26, 2013, the CBI announced life imprisonment to the Talwar couple. Today, the appeal filed by them will be heard and I believe they will get justice,” Sunil Maurya, writer of book 'Ek thi Aarushi' was quoted as saying by the news agency minutes before the acquittal was announced.
