The Talwars’ counsel on Tuesday rejected the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) theory that golf clubs were used to murder teenager Aarushi Talwar and the family’s domestic help Hemraj Banjade.
Continuing the final arguments on behalf of accused Rajesh Talwar and his wife Nupur, defence counsel Tanvir Ahmed Mir on Tuesday said the clubs weren’t even in the picture till October 2009.
The final arguments in the sensational murders that took place in Noida in 2008 are in the final stages.
Mir said the golf club theory as mentioned in the crime scene analysis report was submitted by forensic expert Mohinder Singh Dahiya on October 26, 2009. “Without analysing the clubs in question, Dr Dahiya gave his opinion about these being the murder weapons even before the golf set was seized by the CBI,” Mir told the court.
The CBI had seized a set of 12 golf clubs belonging to Rajesh Talwar on October 30, 2009.
The defence lawyer said Dr Sunil Dohre, who had conducted Aarushi’s post-mortem examination, never mentioned the shape of injuries in his statements to CBI investigators before May 28, 2010.
{{/usCountry}}The defence lawyer said Dr Sunil Dohre, who had conducted Aarushi’s post-mortem examination, never mentioned the shape of injuries in his statements to CBI investigators before May 28, 2010.
{{/usCountry}}“It was only in May 2010 that the doctor mentioned the V-shaped injuries on Aarushi’s forehead and said that such injuries were possible with a golf club. The U or V shape of injuries was never mentioned in the post-mortem report earlier,” Mir contended.
The golf club theory is important to the CBI’s case as the agency had been maintaining that a forensic report had found two golf sticks from the set to be cleaner than the rest.
The dimension of one of the sticks was similar to the blunt injuries inflicted on the two victims, case investigating officer AGL Kaul had told the court earlier.
The defence counsel also questioned the authenticity of the test identification parade (TIP) carried out on August 2, 2010. The Talwars’ driver Umesh Sharma was called to identify two previous missing golf clubs that he had kept in Hemraj’s room a couple of months before the murders.
“This TIP was never carried out before a magistrate. In fact, Umesh was called to identify the two clubs from a number of similar ones. The clubs were kept in Hemraj’s room around January 2008 and the TIP took place in August 2010,” Mir said.