Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Rajesh and Nupur Talwar: India; Part 5; An excerpt from Toronto Star journalist Shree Paradkar's powerful, convincing ebook, "Betrayed: My cousin's wrongful conviction for the murder of his daughter Aarushi," published by The Toronto Star. Links to key documents including autopsy reports and crime scene analysis and the court's judgment.


eBOOK EXCERPT:  "Betrayed: My cousin's wrongful conviction for the murder of his daughter Aarushi," by  Shree Paradkar: The following story is excerpted from Betrayed: My Cousin’s Wrongful Conviction for the Murder of Her Daughter, Aarushi . The full ebook is available through the Star’s weekly program Star Dispatches at stardispatches.com . Toronto Star journalist Shree Paradkar is the cousin of Nupur Talwar. Her extended family believes Aarushi’s parents are innocent and were wrongly convicted, and that the case points to serious shortcomings in India’s legal system. Paradkar grew up in Bangalore, India, where she was a reporter at the Times of India. She is a home page editor of thestar.com." (The ebook is available through the Star’s weekly program, Star Dispatches, where you can subscribe for $1/week. Single copies are $2.99 at stardispatches.com/starstore and stardispatches.com/itunes.)

SUB-HEADING: "In a stinging indictment of India’s law-enforcement and legal systems, Toronto Star journalist Shree Paradkar chronicles the farcical investigation and trial that led to what she believes is the wrongful conviction of a murdered girl’s parents. The case has made headlines around the world."

GIST: "Prosecutors put forward the argument that Rajesh Talwar came across Aarushi and live-in cook Hemraj Banjade in the girl’s bedroom, where they were either about to have sex or were in the middle of it. This was the “grave and sudden provocation” that led Rajesh to kill them with his golf club and slit their necks with a dental scalpel. (In fact, the couple did not practice dentistry in their home and had no reason to keep instruments there.) No semen was ever found on either Aarushi or Hemraj’s clothes. Neither Hemraj’s blood nor hair nor DNA was found in Aarushi’s room. This was a sign of a cleanup by the Talwars, prosecutors alleged. The whitish discharge in Aarushi’s vagina — normal in pubescent girls between periods — was proof of sex, they said. The doctor who conducted the post-mortem on Hemraj told court that the dead man’s swollen penis was evidence that sexual activity was either about to take place or was taking place. This knowledge, said the doctor, was not based in science but on his experience as a married man. The other doctor who conducted Aarushi’s autopsy and noted her genital area as “nothing abnormal detected” testified that he made several changes to that report without re-examining the body (which had been cremated). These included a ruptured hymen, a wide vaginal opening and a “cleaned-up” vagina. The vaginal opening was so wide he could see the canal inside, he said. A gynecologist for the defence called that a medical impossibility. The vaginal orifice would not be found open in a dead body, she said, even if it had been opened and cleaned. To see the canal would require the labia to be forced open. “Once rigor mortis has just started or has developed and if someone tries to interfere with the vaginal cavity or genital organs, then in that area, perimortem injuries will be caused,” she is recorded as saying. If that were the case, the doctor could not have written “nothing abnormal detected” in his original report. Defence counsel Tanveer Ahmed Mir called the testimony of two post-mortem doctors “medical blasphemy.” To prove Aarushi and Hemraj were together in her bedroom, forensic scientist B.K. Mohapatra, testifying for the prosecution, claimed that Hemraj’s pillowcase was found in Aarushi’s room. But when the pillowcase was unsealed in court, it exposed a tag that read, “Pillow and pillow cover, blood stained (from servant’s room).” That is, it had been taken from Hemraj’s own room. The golf club, the prosecution admitted, had no blood or body fluid linking it to the murder. But one club, with No. 5 on it, was said to have less dirt on it than others in the bag; the CBI alleged that was sign of a “cleanup.” The “triangular-shaped” injuries on both victims matched the club, they said. However, none of the injuries was described as being triangular by either of the forensic doctors who conducted the post-mortems. Meanwhile, a report from the government’s own forensic lab showed this club was among the dirtier ones and had not been cleaned. R.K. Sharma, a forensic scientist of repute testifying for the defence, said an injury from a golf club would have caused a depressed fracture, not the line fractures noted on both victims. No dental scalpel was ever presented as evidence, but prosecutors argued that both dentists had dissected cadavers as undergraduates two decades earlier. However, Sharma said Rajesh’s dental scalpel, with a cutting edge of 8 mm, would have been too small to create the kind of injury seen in Aarushi’s neck. British DNA expert Andre Semikhodskii told the court that forensic scientists had “not connected the accused with the crime in any DNA report.” 

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Following this excerpt from Shree Paradkar's incisive  account of a brutal miscarriage of justice  that shows India's criminal justice system in a terrible light you will find links that will assist in understanding the case: Aarushi's autopsy,  Hemraj’s autopsy, changes to Aarushi’s autopsy and crime-scene analysis. The Judgment;

The entire Ebook excerpt can be found at: 

http://www.thestar.com/news/stardispatches/2014/02/19/ebook_excerpt_betrayed_my_cousins_wrongful_conviction_for_the_murder_of_her_daughter_aarushi.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:

Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.

  I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located  near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.

The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:

http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith

Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
 
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
 
I look forward to hearing from readers at:

hlevy15@gmail.com.
 
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog