Aarushi murder probe officer recalled

Two weeks after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had shifted out Deputy Superintendent of Police A G Kaul, the Aarushi Talwar (13)-Hemraj Banjade (14)-murder case investigating officer, he is back, to lead the probe.

Two weeks after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had shifted out Deputy Superintendent of Police A G Kaul, the Aarushi Talwar (13)-Hemraj Banjade (14)-murder case investigating officer, he is back, to lead the probe.

HT Image

The agency’s move, said a CBI source on condition of anonymity, was prompted by a likelihood that the officer’s departure could have “further delayed” the 21-month-old unsolved case’s probe.

Hindustan Times (HT) had on February 28 first reported the officer’s shift to the agency’s anti corruption wing -- Anti Corruption Unit (ACU).

Kaul, who was part of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) tasked to crack the case,, was handling the probe since September 2009.

The agency did not offer any comments about the ongoing probe into the murder case.

The SIT was reconstituted last September after it lost services of two key officers, Joint Director (JD) Arun Kumar and Superintendent of Police (SP) Vijay Kumar.

While Kumar, an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, was repatriated to the Uttar Pradesh cadre, the SP

shifted to the agency's anti-corruption wing.

The earlier Special Investigation Team (SIT), whose work was supervised by Kumar, had held three suspects in the double murder case: medical assistant Krishna Thadarai, domestic helps Rajkumar Sharma and Vijay Mandal.

The then SIT had reached its conclusion on the basis of narco revelations leading to owning up of the crimes by Thadarai and Sharma; Mandal was apparently just a ‘witness’.

The re-constituted SIT, on the other hand, has been verifying possible leads afresh.

While it put Talwar’s parents, dentists Rajesh and Nupur Talwar through narco tests in Gujarat’s Gandhi Nagar three weeks ago, it is yet to put Thadarai, Sharma and Mandal back on its scanner.

The SIT, though, does treat the trio as ‘suspects’, as HT recently reported.

Aarushi and Banjade were killed in an identical manner, their heads bludgeoned with a blunt object and necks sliced with a sharp weapon suspected to be a khukri, on May 16, 2008.

Aarushi’s body was found in her bedroom at flat number L-32, second floor, Jal Vayu Vihar, Sector 25, Noida; a day after her body was recovered, Banjade’s body was found on the building’s terrace.