Tuesday , November 26
At the heart of the CBI's case in the Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj Banjade double murder is a perverted patriarchal fantasy. The CBI and Noida police are convinced that 14-year-old Aarushi was having an "affair" with 45-year-old domestic help, Hemraj. It was, after all, because of this "affair" that father Rajesh in a fit of rage, on seeing Aarushi and Hemraj in an "objectionable intimate position" killed them both due to grave provocation. Ah, the lurid fantasies of the porn-suffused brain! The deadly mix of lascivious prejudice and moral puritanism that grips our mind when we think of "young women" these days. The automatic suspicion of endless orgies and extravagant nudity with which a brutally patriarchal society gazes at a "modern" young woman's bare arms, clothes and lifestyle. How excitingly value-less these young are, whisper the puritan-pornographers in vicarious glee.
How have the police reached this conclusion of an "affair" between Aarushi and Hemraj? After all this is THE fulcrum of the case, this is THE fundamental pivot on which the entire case turns. Is there any evidence of this fundamentally important "affair"? None whatsoever. Has the CBI in these last five years been able to produce any neighbour, friend, family, observer, and local domestic to help corroborate their story of this so-called affair? No. Do the local chowkidars or maids say Aarushi was having this "affair"? No. Do any of Aarushi's friends believe she was having this "affair"? No. Has any local help caught a glimpse of this "affair"? No.
What an efficiently well-hidden affair it was indeed! The 14-year-old girl was wicked, fallen and obviously very clever too! Must be those T-shirts she used to wear - never trust young girls who wear those tight-fitting T-shirts and smile invitingly into the camera! And since she was below the age of consent it wasn't an affair either, Hemraj was in fact committing an act of rape.
The police, CBI, courts and media remain convinced of this "affair" because in the khap panchayat of our minds, where sexual fantasy combines with misogynist prejudice, minds in which lustful males perpetually couple with nubile young things, where a growing young woman is first and foremost a sexual, promiscuous object, in this prejudiced mind, Aarushi is the 14-year-old Lolita who is defined primarily by her sexuality. Male journalists covering the story drool at the subtext of the story - there is such sinfully exciting frisson in the newsroom from the saga about sex-and-a-14-year-old schoolgirl!
At a notorious press conference - and I used this word advisedly, as that press conference was nothing short of notorious - held by IG Meerut Range Gurudarshan Singh on 12 July 2008, IG Singh simply could not remember Aarushi's name. Sometimes he called her Anupama, sometimes he called her Anuradha. Yet he announced in ringing tones to the public that the-girl-whose-name-I-can't-remember was having an affair with Hemraj and this is why her father killed her in an "honour killing". IG Singh provided a verdict before even the evidence had been properly collected. In the policeman's mind Aarushi is not 14-year-old Aarushi, she is a Sexually Oriented Young Woman of The Modern Era. She Wears Jeans. She Wears Sleeveless Tops. Thus she has affairs. Who cares what her name is and what the facts of the case are? Who cares what the evidence is? This is how it is in the world of "posh" and "influential" people.
The media, which functioned as the trumpeting cheerleading B team of the police and CBI throughout in his case, excitedly bought the police version, male journalists privately sniggering about the posters on Aarushi's walls.
Post Nirbhaya, as we confront the violent narrow-mindedness and hatred that exists in our society towards "modern young women", the attitudes and prejudices of police, courts and media towards Aarushi have been nothing short of revolting, downright nauseating.
Read the Aarushi-Hemraj case in detail and you will see that the police and CBI have absolutely no case. There is not a shred of evidence against the Talwars. There is not a shred of evidence that Aarushi was having an "affair" with Hemraj. In fact, her friends have suggested that on the contrary, Hemraj was a father figure to Aarushi. Throughout the case, while CBI has brought 39 witnesses, the Talwars have not been allowed to call their the 14 other witnesses they wanted, they have not been allowed to call for forensic slides, narco test details or post-mortem reports.
The CBI refused to provide Touch DNA tests to the Talwars because they were apparently too expensive. It's almost as if CBI and courts are hell-bent on convicting the Talwars, even without evidence, in some crazy cuckoo-land-protective zeal for the dead Aarushi who, over-sexy and promiscuous as she was, unfortunately earned the wrath of that bearded bulldog dad. In an earlier article I had written about the stereotypes about the Talwars that have been created by the media.
Why are the courts and police and media so eager to hunt down the Talwars?
Because in the khap panchayat mentality of our law enforcement agencies, the Talwars and Aarushi have become symbols of the so called value-less society which we crave and condemn by turn. An unassuming hard-working dentist couple, who after long hours of work, slept like logs through that hot May night like so many exhausted professionals do, living in a small flat in the suburbs have become symbols of an "upscale" "elitist" society dominated by alcohol, sex, and "wife swapping"" lifestyles. Anyone who defends the Talwars, in the eyes of the police, instantly become identified as members of a society where "posh", "influential" people run homes of dark depravity, where scantily- clad daughters prance about with domestic help where a frivolous "party circuit" seeks to protect each other through expensive lawyers and well-connected friends. Dominated by crime serials and Bollywood images, today investigative agencies are liable to see even a bottle of whisky in a house as nothing less than a mark of a House Of Sin!
In the Talwar case, this caricature has led the CBI to imagine that is fighting a people's war for morality. The CBI and courts, in their own self-image are thus idealistic revolutionaries, up against this privileged class, fighting the war of the public against a depraved aristocracy, this is CBI and courts cast in the role of peoples messiah!
May god save us from such messiahs? Question the CBI about the Aarushi case and you get immediate statements about lifestyle, influential people and shady goings on involving bottles of Ballantine's and Sula. Incidentally, the CBI court which convicted the Talwars believed that after the double murders, Rajesh Talwar drank a bottle of Ballantine's whisky, a bottle of Sula wine, a bottle of beer as well as two litres of Sprite and remained none the worse for wear. Nobody got even a whiff of all the booze on him the next morning!
In fact, Rajesh, for the CBI, is an ogre of monumental proportions who slays his daughter, slays Hemraj, drags Hemraj to the terrace with superhuman strength and then consumes vast amounts of alcohol. What on earth is such a man doing being a dentist? He should be a mafia don!
Read the court judgements on the Talwars and you will find lengthy, flatulent sermons on the depravity of society and value-lessness of the freaks of nature who inhabit the world these days. Our law enforcement agencies are clearly watching far too much TV.
The emphasis is always on moral and social perceptions, rarely on facts and evidence. The television coverage, the frenzied pictures and the crazy headlines have transformed the Aarushi-Hemraj case from one that should be based on fact and evidence, to one based on perception, moral judgement and bloodthirsty public opinion baying for punishment of those "elitist" people seen to be polluting our society. The highly coloured, distorted copy produced by newspapers is primarily responsible for this murder by perception, this rape of truth.
I have followed this case since it broke five-and-a-half years ago. I write this piece in self-reflection and in introspection at what the salacious and sensationalist media coverage has done and the manner in which a media witch hunt has served up to the gallows, two people who, I believe are innocent. All of us in the media need to introspect at the manner in which we have covered the Aarushi story. We need to ask where the gloating glee over the sexcapades of 14-year-olds, feverish whisperings about enraged fathers and "cold-as-ice killer mothers", has led us. In the race for TRPs, and sensationalist headlines, we are all part of a massive and scandalous miscarriage of justice simply because of the preconceptions we have chosen to revel in.
The first team of the CBI gave a clean chit to the Talwars and instead seemed to be accusing the domestic help. In the polygraph, brain mapping and lie detector tests, the Talwars showed no deception and no knowledge of the crime. Krishna and Rajkumar showed deception. The first team described Krishna as aggressive, disloyal prone to lies and deception.
The first team proved, on basis of sound reconstruction tests that you could not hear what was going on in Aarushi's room from the parents' room particularly if the noisy air-conditioner was on. It was proved that neither of the Talwars woke up to switch off the internet at night as the internet router goes off and on through the night, and the CBI did not include router activity in its closure report. But for some inexplicable reason, in September 2009, the first team of the CBI was suddenly changed. Why?
Consider this: In 2008, a CBI investigation officer, Anuj Arya approached veteran journalist Nalini Singh. Nalini runs a Nepali channel. Arya asked Singh if songs were playing on her channel between 11.44 pm and 11.55 pm on the intervening night of May 15-16 2008, the night Aarushi was killed. Nalini checked her FPC and found that indeed songs were playing at the time.
Arya then provided the name of the song and asked if this was the song that was playing. Nalini once again checked with her producer and confirmed yes, it was the very same Nepali song that was playing at the time. This was the same song the CBI officer had heard being hummed by Krishna and the other helps in the narco tests. If all three were humming the same song, was it not logical to assume they were watching the same song together on TV and thus were present in the room where there was a TV, namely Hemraj's room? Does this not support the conclusion that there were more people in the flat other than the Talwars, Aarushi and Hemraj, given that Hemraj's room which had access to the flat has an entry from the outside too, so there was no need for a forced entry?
A crucial bit of evidence was suppressed by the CBI. The blood and DNA of Hemraj was found on the pillow of Krishna, recovered by the police. Why did the second team of the CBI describe this entire finding as a typographical error?
The Noida police say they were forced by Dr Talwar to look for Hemraj in Nepal. The police said Talwar refused to give them the keys to the roof, a "refusal" later cited as an attempt to mislead the investigation. Why could the police not simply have broken down the roof door if they had been determined to search the premises in a professional manner?
The first CBI team found no evidence of the so called "surgical weapon" that had supposedly been used to slit Aarushi and Hemraj's throat. The first team of the CBI recovered a khukri from the house of Krishna. The first team claimed that if there is one weapon that can inflict both a sharp injury and a blunt injury, that weapon is the khukri.
An energised public opinion and a crusading media are in the mood to take on the high and mighty. These are times when abuse of domestic help and tortures inflicted by the rich employers on poor staff are chronicled every day. Who hasn't seen those shocking sights of middle class family parties at restaurants while a skinny maid stands by the door struggling with the spoilt-brat infant?
Too often the rich get away, employers get away, and poor servants are left carrying the can for the misdeeds of powerful employers. This is often the truth. But it is also often NOT the truth. We have to honour the truth by not letting the truth become a formula. We must honour the truth by not letting the truth become a lie. The truth is not a morality of play of rich vs poor. The truth is not a street theatre about evil employers vs vulnerable domestic helps when both are media creations rather than real people. The truth is to be established, case by case, irrespective of class, creed, caste or community. The truth is not reliant on who belongs to which social strata. The truth must be supported by evidence. The truth sometimes goes against public opinion. The law must uphold the truth even if it goes against public opinion and the prevailing climate.
Today Tarun Tejpal stands charged with sexual assault because nobody can refute the glaring evidence of the letters, emails and apology. But the Talwars have been sent to jail on no evidence, on cover-ups and on suppression of facts. They have been carried to jail on a swelling tide of media frenzy, public opinion, and the khap-panchayat mentality of pornography-suffused puritanism which is the hallmark of our law enforcement today.
It's time to switch off our pornography-suffused puritanical gaze in the Talwar case. It's time to stop fantasizing about the "affairs" of 14-year-old schoolgirls. It's time to stop demonising busy working parents as homicidal representatives of a "swinging" lifestyle. It's time to stop attacking those who defend the Talwars as English-speaking Marie Antoinettes who oppress servants. Social class and caste are not determinants of legal guilt. Moral judgements are no substitute for facts and evidence. The Talwars themselves re-opened the CBI closure report as they wanted a fair investigation to find their daughter's killers.
As a society we owe the dead 14-year-old and the dutiful Hemraj our commitment to the truth. Three words must animate the courts and media now as the case goes forward: evidence, evidence, and evidence.
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