The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has sought help from two Canadian forensic laboratories to crack the Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj Banjade murder case.
The CBI has approached the Ontario Centre for Forensic Sciences, located in Toronto, and the Warnex Pro-DNA Services, Inc, based in
Silver Bay, to test evidence using a new DNA technology that is not yet available in India.
These laboratories use methods like Touch DNA (also called Low Count Number) and Mitochondrial DNA to extract DNA from an object even if it is so much as touched by a person or a contaminated object of evidentiary value, according to a CBI official, requesting anonymity.
The Mumbai police’s crime branch had sought help of these two laboratories to conclusively prove their case against the accused in the murder of 60-year-old gynaecologist Dr. Asha Sadan Goyal, a Canadian national, at a Malabar Hill flat in 2003.
“The Canadian laboratories managed to extract DNA of the victim from a T-shirt of one of the accused, domestic help Pradip Prabhakar Parab, even though it had been washed several times,” said a case investigator attached to CBI's Unit Two that had probed the case.
He added, "The laboratories came handy in solving the case at a time methods like Narco analysis test, brain mapping and lie detector tests had proved inconclusive."
Parab had earlier confessed to the police that the victim, a Canadian national, was murdered as a result of a criminal conspiracy among her three brothers (one of them is dead now) due to a property dispute.
The crime branch had acquired the Bombay High Court's approval to get the tests done at the Canadian laboratories.
A bloody handprint, clothes of the two murder victims and a few suspects, and an empty wine bottle are among the evidence that the CBI wants tested in the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case.
The Hindustan Times had, on May 23, reported the fact that CBI director Ashwani Kumar decided to take help of the technique, not available in India, to crack the case.