New Delhi:
Rajeshwari Sahay was among the school friends who 13-year-old Aarushi Talwar was planning to invite to her birthday party. Then, just a few days before she turned 14, Aarushi was found with her throat slit in her family's apartment in Noida near Delhi.
"We've lost her in such a gruesome way and over the years, we've watched her get murdered even more," said Rajeshwari, who is now studying English at college.
She objected fiercely to the theory -accepted by a court in Uttar Pradesh yesterday- that Aarushi was killed by her parents after they found her in what investigators call "an objectionable position" with Hemraj.
"Before passing a judgement on a minor who has been killed, people should reconsider once, because this could have happened in any of our houses. She could have been their daughter or their sister or their friend. This is like assassinating her character," she said, sitting in her bedroom.
Aarushi's parents, Nupur and Rajesh, have been convicted of the double murders; their lawyers say they will challenge that verdict in a higher court.
The case captivated India partly because for years, investigators admitted they were clueless about who the killers were. In December 2010, the CBI told the court that it wanted to close the case, accepting that it would remain an unsolved mystery. It was the Talwars who challenged that decision; they said they wanted justice for their daughter. The judge then ordered they themselves would stand trial for the double murder.
Supporters of the Talwars say that their conviction is the direct consequence of police incompetence and a media witch-hunt that included the circulation of unsubstantiated theories about the family.
In the first 24 hours after Aarushi was found dead, the police failed to seal the crime scene, allowing reporters and others to trample over crucial evidence. It was only the next day that Hemraj's corpse was found just a flight of stairs above the apartment on the roof.