Noida police botched case beyond repair: CBI

The Noida police, which probed the Aarushi Talwar (13)-Hemraj Banjade (45) murders for a fortnight after the incident took place on May 15-16, 2008, allegedly messed the case beyond repair. Abhishek Sharan reports.

The Noida police, which probed the Aarushi Talwar (13)-Hemraj Banjade (45) murders for a fortnight after the incident took place on May 15-16, 2008, allegedly messed the case beyond repair.

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A senior case investigator the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said the probe “was handicapped from the day it (CBI) took over the case from Noida police. We were facing huge constraints and gaps in the case as a result”. The CBI on Wednesday submitted its closure report in the case before a Ghaziabad court.

The officer said, “The sanctity of the crime scene was not secured by the local police.”

The Noida police had lifted 26 fingerprints from the crime scene but only two of them could be obtained, according to the officer. “The two fingerprints that could be recovered from a bottle did not throw results that could match with any of the case’s suspects: Krishna (Thadarai), domestic helps Rajkumar (Sharma) and Vijay Mandal, and Aarushi’s parents dentists Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, or others.”

The Noida police’s alleged negligence also led to the swapping, whether deliberate or due to negligence, of Aarushi’s vaginal swabs at the local hospital after her body’s autopsy, according to him.

“A possible clue to the killer/s’ identity was lost, ” he said. The forensic examination of the crime scene’s samples had thrown only around “four DNA profiles” that did not match with the suspects, he added.