13-year-old girl Aarushi Talwar and 45-year-old man 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. The dentist couple, Dr. Rajesh Talwar and Dr. Nupur Talwar with their daughter and domestic help lived in an apartment in Sector 25 (Jalvayu Vihar) of Noida - UP. 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. Dr. Nupur tried calling him on the 16th morning, the phone rang and immediately got switched off. Then it was not reachable. Aarushi's phone too was missing, but was found after couple of months. 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 the three men were released for lack of evidence.
During a press-conference on 11 July 2008, Arun Kumar stated that the case was still unsolved. He stated that no evidence had been found against Rajesh Talwar, but also added that the CBI had not given him a "clean chit". He stated that Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal seemed to be the prime suspects, based on the narco tests, but the CBI had not found any corroborative evidence against them. The story around the mysterious murder ranged from so-called wife swapping parties thrown by the dentist couple to 14-year-old Aarushi having an affair with the middle-aged cook (yes, honour killing was the reason given by one senior police officer) and having an affair with classmate Amit Agrawal. Not one of these theories was backed by any evidence at all. The CBI team under Kumar had concluded that the 14-year-old girl and domestic help Hemraj were murdered by Krishna Thadarai - help at Talwar's clinic, his friend Rajkumar-- a domestic servant with Praful and Anita Durrani who were Talwars' friends, and Vijay Mandal, driver of Talwars' neighbour. The Allahabad High Court had on Thursday cancelled the life sentence handed out to the Talwars by a lower court that had convicted them based on circumstantial evidence. The couple then went to Nupur Talwar's parents' home in Jal Vayu Vihar.
In 2008, Balaji Telefilms decided to depict an "inspired" version of the murder case on their soap opera Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. Nupur Talwar requested the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to stop Balaji Telefilms from airing the show, saying that the production house was trying to earn TRPs by exploiting a tragedy. However, the production house refused to change the script.. The 2015 film Rahasya (mystery) was inspired by the twin murders. Talvar, another 2015 film, written by Vishal Bhardwaj and directed by Meghna Gulzar, is also based on the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case.Talvar depicts three contradictory accounts of the case, including the parents' version. The 2017 Tamil language movie Nibunan features a plot in which a young girl and a family servant are murdered by the girl's parents for having an affair. This story is seemingly inspired by Aarushi-Hemraj murder case. In October 2017, a four-part investigative documentary series Aarushi - Beyond Reasonable Doubt, which explores the arguments and circumstances of the case, its investigations, and the remaining unresolved questions, premiered on Channel NewsAsia. Commissioned by Channel NewsAsia, it was produced by StoryTeller Films. In November 2017 a Star World original production in association with HBO Asia released a crime documentary mini series called The Talwars: Behind Closed Doors.
This real life tragic story of the death of a girl entering her teens in her house, when parents were around, is still in the list of unsolved murders. Heart wrenching indeed.
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