Noida cops tapped Talwars’ phones

The Noida police were tapping the phones of Dr Rajesh Talwar and his family members while they investigated the Aarushi murder case.

As the Noida police struggled to get leads in the double murder case after branding Hemraj as the killer only to find his body on the terrace of Talwar’s house on May 17, they put the landline and mobile phones of the family under observation, top police sources told Hindustan Times.

Senior UP Police officers, however, refused to say whether the tapping was done officially after obtaining the requisite permission of the state home department.

When contacted, Additional Director General (Law and Order) Brij Lal refused to comment on the tapping or on permission obtained.

Lal had been directly supervising the investigation of the case and had been briefing the media regularly. It was after he made the statement, that the murders appeared to be

the work of a “doctor or a butcher”, that the Noida police arrested Talwar.

Sources said the phones had been put under observation to get evidence that could lead the police to the killers.

Senior officers refused to say whether they had come across any such conversation on Talwar’s phone that led them to believe he killed his daughter and servant.

The CBI has said it was Krishna’s statement against Talwar that became the basis of UP Police’s decision to arrest him.

“This is something we had always suspected. At the time of Talwar’s arrest, the UP Police had said someone close to the Talwars had called an advocate to inquire about anticipatory bail and that made him a suspect in the case,” said Talwar’s counsel, Praveen Rai.

When the Noida police was looking into the case, they had not even ruled out the arrest of Aarushi’s mother, Nupur Talwar, after they had arrested her husband.

Senior police officers had said at that time that four people were present in the house on the night of the murders, out of which two were dead. So it was obvious that the Talwar couple were suspects in the case.

The investigations by the CBI have proved that the Noida police had made these statements without any evidence against the Talwars.

Meanwhile, CBI officials said that prima facie it did not appear that the khukri that was recovered from Talwar’s compounder Krishna’s room was the weapon used in the murders.

Sources said that due to the huge presence of media around Talwars’ residence and other places, the investigating agency could not take the suspects to the spot disclosed by them as the area where they disposed off the murder weapon and the mobile phones.

“Our teams would make videos of the places where we carried out searches, which were then showed to the suspects who were in our custody,” a CBI official said.

“Though we had an idea where the weapon and mobile phones were disposed off we were not able to take the suspects to the spot and carry out searches,” the official added.