Countdown to Wrongful Conviction Day: Friday, October 2, 2105; 4 days. For information: http://www.aidwyc.org/wcd-2015/
“Bad news,” read a one-line email from a relative on May 16, 2008. “Aarushi was murdered by the servant last night.” Five
months prior I had been blessed with my first-born in Toronto. I had
thought there could be no similar life-changing moment again. What
happened next is part of urban legend in India, in its various forms of
imagination, innuendo, lies and part-truths; with one thread of truth
holding it all together – both Aarushi and the household help Hemraj
were dead. Today, Aarushi’s parents Rajesh Talwar and my cousin Nupur are serving life in prison for the murders. All
of us in the extended family believe they are wrongfully convicted –
there simply has been no evidence of guilt and no motive for murder...I knew of Aarushi’s developments through
her grandma, my mother’s older sister Lata Chitnis. But I have got to
know Aarushi much better since she was gone. I have interviewed her
friends, quizzed family members and pored over photographs and videos to
understand who she was. One thing that will always stay with me is what she once laughingly told her friends, “I want to be famous.” Our poor little girl. She never deserved to have her life taken or her dignity shorn apart as it has been seven years since her death. RIP, people say, when they think of Aarushi. But as long as her parents are in jail, how can she rest and where is the peace?"
(Shree Paradkar is Nupur Talwar’s cousin. She is also Deputy Digital Editor at ‘The Toronto Star’, where she has written extensively about the case.)
http://www.thequint.com/women/2015/09/26/i-want-to-be-famous-as-aarushis-relative-remembers-her