Discovery of Aarushi's body
On 16 May 2008, the family's housemaid Bharati Mandal (35) rang their doorbell around 6 am. She had been employed six days earlier.[17] Everyday, Hemraj would open the door for her, as Nupur and Rajesh were late risers. But this time, nobody opened the door even after she rang the doorbell twice. She later stated that she tried pushing the outermost gate, but it did not open.[18]
After Bharati rang the doorbell again, Nupur opened the innermost wooden door. Speaking through the mesh of the middle grill door, she told Bharati that this door was locked from outside. She asked Bharati about the whereabouts of Hemraj. When Bharati said that she had no idea, Nupur remarked that Hemraj must have gone outside to fetch milk and must have locked the door from outside. She asked Bharati to wait outside until Hemraj returned.[17] Bharati did not want to wait and asked Nupur to throw the keys. Nupur asked her to go downstairs so that she could throw the keys to her from the balcony.[15]
Nupur then called Hemraj's mobile phone, but the call was abruptly cut. When she tried calling him again, the phone appeared to have been switched off.[10] When Bharati reached downstairs, Nupur asked her to go back and check if the door was just latched, not locked.[17] Bharati insisted that Nupur throw the keys anyway, so that she wouldn't have to take the stairs again, in case the door was locked. Nupur then threw the keys down to Bharati.[18]
According to the Talwars, by this time, Rajesh also woke up. He entered the living room and saw a near-empty Scotch whisky bottle on the dining table, which surprised him. He asked Nupur who had kept the bottle there, and then alarmed, asked her to check Aarushi's room. Aarushi's room had a self-locking door, and it would generally be locked. It could be opened only from inside or from outside with a key. But the couple found it unlocked on that morning. When they entered the room, they saw Aarushi's dead body lying on her bed. Rajesh started screaming, while Nupur remained silent (due to shock, according to her).[19]
Meanwhile, Bharati returned to the outermost gate: she pushed it, and it opened without the key. She found that the middle door was latched, but not locked. She opened the latch and walked in.[18] When she entered the apartment, she saw Rajesh and Nupur crying. Nupur asked her to come inside Aarushi's room. Bharati stood at the entrance of the room, as Nupur walked inside. Aarushi's body lay on her bed; it was covered with a flannel blanket. Nupur pulled the blanket, and Bharati saw that Aarushi's throat was slit. Both the parents blamed Hemraj for Aarushi's murder in front of the maid. Bharati walked out of the apartment to inform the neighbours. She returned to the house and asked the Talwars if they wanted her to do the daily household chores. When they said "No", she moved on to work in other households.[17]
The Talwars called their family and friends. Puneesh Rai Tandon, a neighbour who lived one floor below the Talwars, asked the Jalvayu Vihar security guard Virendra Singh to inform the police.[20] By the time the police arrived, there were 15 people in the living room and 5-6 people in the Talwars' bedroom; only Aarushi's room was vacant. The crime scene had been "completely trampled upon".[10] The story of a murder in an affluent neighbourhood also attracted many mediapersons, who gathered around the house by 8 am.[19]
Hemraj as the suspect
On 16 May, the missing servant Hemraj was the prime suspect. In his police complaint, Rajesh blamed Hemraj for his daughter's murder.[21] He repeatedly told the police to pursue Hemraj instead of wasting time in the apartment, and offered them ₹ 25,000 to rush to Hemraj's native village in Nepal. The police suspected that Hemraj entered Aarushi's room in an inebriated state after consuming Scotch whisky, and tried tosexually assault her. When she resisted, he killed her with a kukri (a Nepali knife). The police announced a reward of ₹ 20,000 for tips leading to his capture.[10]
Aarushi's body was taken for post-mortem around 8:30 am by two Uttar Pradesh police constables. Rajesh's brother Dinesh Talwar, his driver Umesh and his childhood friend Ajay Chadha accompanied the constables.[6] According to CBI, when the post-mortem report was being written between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. on 16 May, a series of telephonic conversations had happened between Dinesh Talwar, Dr. Sushil Chaudhury (Dinesh's friend and the chairman of the ICARE Eye Hospital) and KK Gautam (retired deputy superintendent of police).[10] KK Gautam, while deposing at the CBI court later in 2012, stated that Sushil had requested him to get any references to a sexual assault removed from the post-mortem report, but he refused to oblige.[22] He told the court that he had mentioned this incident to the first CBI team, but they left out this information from their records.[23]
Around 1 pm, Aarushi's body was brought home and placed on ice slabs in the living room. It was taken for cremation at the Antim Niwas crematorium around 4 pm.[24] According to the Talwars, who were later accused of being in a hurry to cremate the body, it was decomposing fast, and the family elders were pushing for cremation. As per them, the police confirmed that the body was not needed for any further examination.[19]
The police later alleged that the Talwars' domestic staff showed undue haste in cleaning Aarushi's room.[10] In Talwars' defence, their compounder Vikas Sethi told the court that he had received the permission to clean the house from the police personnel and a lady constable present on the crime scene.[25]
A part of Aarushi's blood-stained mattress was cut out and sent to the forensics lab along with her pillow, bed sheet and clothes. Vikas Sethi later testified that he, along with three others, tried to dump the remaining part of the mattress on the terrace, but found it locked. An old lady then told him to put the mattress on the neighbouring terrace. Rajesh's driver Umesh then asked the neighbour Puneesh Tandon for the key to his terrace. Earlier, at 4 pm also, Umesh had asked Puneesh for the key, saying that he needed to dump the ice brought for Aarushi's body. This time, Puneesh opened the terrace himself. Umesh, Vikas and two others dragged the mattress to his terrace. Puneesh then locked the terrace door. None of them noticed the body of Hemraj, which was lying on the adjacent terrace, separated by a grilled wall.[20][26]
Discovery of Hemraj's body
On the morning of 16 May, the visitors to the Talwars' house noticed some bloodstains on the terrace door handle. Rajesh's former colleagues Rajiv Kumar Varshney and Rohit Kochhar later told the police that they saw bloodstains on the terrace door, its lock and the staircase leading to the terrace. Varshney had taken the stairs to the terrace by mistake, while visiting the Talwars' house.[27] However, several other witnesses testified that they had not noticed any bloodstains on the staircase in the morning. These witnesses included several police officers, Umesh Sharma, Puneesh Rai Tandon, Bharati Mandal and Vikas Sethi.[26][28][29]Thus, the bloodstains might have been left by the group that tried taking Aarushi's mattress to the Talwars' terrace.[19]
Kocchar stated that the bloodstains on the terrace door were brought to the attention of a police constable named Akhilesh Kumar. Praful Durrani, who also visited the house, claimed that the policeman initially dismissed the spot on the terrace door as rust, and was also dismissive of the bloodstains on the floor. According to Rajiv, the police told him that the killer must have tried to escape through or hide weapon on the terrace, but returned after finding it locked.[30] Eventually, the police were persuaded to investigate the terrace, but they could not get the key to the terrace door. Rohit Kochhar later testified that when a policeman asked Rajesh for the terrace key, he "went into the house and did not come out for a long time." Rajiv told the court that Rajesh went "towards staircase and immediately returned and went inside the house".[31]Rajesh later stated that he does not have exact recollection of what happened at that time, but he insisted that he never stopped the investigators from visiting any part of the house.[6] Ultimately, the police were unable to open the door and let it remain locked until the next day. SP Mahesh Mishra testified that he had asked the terrace door to be opened on 16 May. However, his subordinates told him that Rajesh Talwar couldn't find the key and they couldn't find a mechanic to break open the door. He also stated that he had filed a report on this "carelessness" with the Senior Superintendent of police (SSP) Noida.[29]
On the morning of 17 May, Rajesh and Nupur left for Haridwar to immerse Aarushi's ashes in the Ganges river as per the Hindu custom. Several visitors continued to arrive at the Talwars' house (which was being managed by Dinesh) with their condolences. These visitors included KK Gautam, who had been requested by Sushil Chaudhury to come to the Talwars' house. After arriving at the house, Gautam examined the rooms of Aarushi and Hemraj. Dinesh then showed him the blood stains on the terrace door handle. According to Gautam, Dinesh requested him to get the terrace door lock opened. Gautam then called SP Mahesh Mishra, and told him that the lock needed to be broken. Mishra promised that he would himself visit the crime scene, and meanwhile, sent the station officer Dataram Nauneria to the apartment. The key to the terrace was still missing. Anita Durrani asked the Talwars' neighbour Puneesh Tandon if he had a duplicate key to the Talwars' terrace, to which Tandon replied in the negative.[20] Ultimately, Dataram Nauneria broke open the lock.[22] As the group entered the terrace, they saw more bloody drag marks. A body "in advanced stage of putrefaction" was discovered lying in a pool of blood at about 10:30 am.[7]
Dinesh couldn't identify the newly discovered body, and called Rajesh and Nupur (who were on their way to Haridwar), asking them to return home. Meanwhile, SP Mahesh Mishra also reached the spot.[22] When the couple arrived at the home, Nupur didn't enter the house: she sat in the car with Aarushi's ashes, as she considered it inauspicious to take the ashes inside. Rajesh went upstairs to identify the body. He told the police that he couldn't be sure that the body was that of Hemraj, due to the injuries and the decomposition. Later, a friend of Hemraj identified the body as his.[6]
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