CBI to re-examine Aarushi murder case

Drawing flak for failing to file a charge sheet in the Noida double murder case within the stipulated time, the CBI has formed a three-member team to re-examine the case.

Drawing flak for failing to file a charge sheet in the Noida double murder case within the stipulated time, the CBI has formed a three-member core team to re-examine the case.

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Sources in the investigating agency said the team would re-examine the case from the beginning and has been mandated to question people accused in the murder of Aarushi Talwar and her domestic help Hemraj and verify all evidence.

"Efforts are being made to speed up the case," a CBI spokesman said without elaborating.

The agency, which took over the probe on May 31 into the double murder, has been maintaining investigations were not complete despite its former director Vijay Shanker claiming that the agency had nearly cracked the case.

Following the murder of 14-year-old Aarushi and Hemraj on the intervening night of May 15 and 16, Aarushi's dentist father Rajesh Talwar was arrested by Noida Police on May 23. However, after the case was taken over by the CBI, the agency gave a clean chit to him on July 11.

The sources said the three-member team would piece all the evidences together and ascertain whether some gaps were left earlier while probing the blind murder case.

The failure of the CBI to file the charge sheet led to the release of Raj Kumar, a domestic help of a family friend of Talwar, Talwar's compounder Krishna and another domestic help Vijay Mandal.

The weapon of offence and the mobile phones of the deceased are to be recovered and further linkages probed. A Letters Rogatory is being sent to Nepal, seeking assistance in locating some witnesses and mobile phones of the deceased.

The CBI has been maintaining that the weapon used in the double murder case was a heavy and sharp-edged one which could be a 'khukri' (Nepalese dagger).