New Delhi: Four years after a special CBI court convicted the dentist couple Nupur and Rajesh Talwar of murdering their teen daughter Aarushi and servant Hemraj at their Noida apartment in 2008, the Allahabad High Court set aside the conviction.
A division bench of Justices BK Narayana and AK Mishra cleared the couple’s murder charges saying that they could not be held guilty on the basis of mere suspicion and circumstantial evidence.
The judges also pointed out loopholes in the CBI investigation. Talwars’ acquittal has once again brought the pathetic conviction rate of the country’s premier agency in limelight.
Earlier this year, the Lok Sabha was informed about the conviction rate of the CBI. The numbers revealed a dip in the investigation agency’s conviction rate in the last three years.
The conviction rate of the CBI dipped from 69 per cent in 2014 to 66.8 per cent in 2016. Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Jitendra Singh informed Lok Sabha in April 2017 that in 2014 the conviction rate was 69.02 per cent, in 2015 it was 65.1 per cent and in 2016 it was 66.8 per cent.
“In order to ensure better conviction rate, government had taken various measures for improving the functioning of the CBI which, inter alia, includes modernisation of the CBI, enhanced quality of training, upgradation of infrastructure, creation of additional posts of public prosecutors, modernisation of CFSL etc,” he said.
In 2011, Rajesh Talwar, in an interview with a TV channel, had criticized the investigating agency. “I cannot understand this kind of investigative agency. I have no words for them,” he had said.
The Special CBI court in Ghaziabad had sentenced the couple to life imprisonment in 2013 for murdering their own daughter and killing their domestic help Hemraj, purely on the basis of circumstantial evidence.
The couple has been serving the sentence since November 2013.
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