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3.69 AVERAGE
3.69 AVERAGE
“The whole truth is a luxury. In case you are looking for it, a courtroom isn’t the place to either start or end the search.”
I rarely watch the movie before the book on a subject. But in this case I watched the movie Talvar before reading this book. Should you read the book if you have watched the movie already - I certainly recommend it.
Avirook Sen's book Aarushi is filled with facts, and also has very good analysis. The sad part of course is other than the bungling in the initial stages of the investigation, is the determination of the CBI second team to pursue a line of thought even if the evidence is not quite there. Alarming is the attempt to align witnesses who change/enhance their testimonies and also other evidences are all tailored to achieve an outcome. This reminds me of John Grisham's "Innocent man" which is also based on a true story. Sometimes select law enforcement people can take the entire system along based on a gut feel of who is guilty. There is also the close scrutiny from the press and people, who want the case solved.
A sad reflection of the systems and processes in place. A read I strongly recommend.....
Avirook Sen's book Aarushi is filled with facts, and also has very good analysis. The sad part of course is other than the bungling in the initial stages of the investigation, is the determination of the CBI second team to pursue a line of thought even if the evidence is not quite there. Alarming is the attempt to align witnesses who change/enhance their testimonies and also other evidences are all tailored to achieve an outcome. This reminds me of John Grisham's "Innocent man" which is also based on a true story. Sometimes select law enforcement people can take the entire system along based on a gut feel of who is guilty. There is also the close scrutiny from the press and people, who want the case solved.
A sad reflection of the systems and processes in place. A read I strongly recommend.....
The gruesomeness of the double murders of Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjade was a rude jolt to people who followed the media. To compound to the horror, the murders occurred within the confines of a well-to-do urban middle class home in Noida. During 2008, the smartphone industry had not taken off in India and not everyone was connected to the internet all the time. Ergo, the very few news channels at work during this time and the print media had a field day following the discovery of these murders. The fact that inside a locked house that housed an urbane couple, their only child and a servant there was not one but two grisly murders carried out stunned middle class families to horrified silence. The Police investigation which was underway was deemed not satisfactory and with a lot of political and public fanfare, the case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
We humans have this nature of forgetting even the most grisly things which are not directly connected to us and so happened with the double murder case until the time the CBI announced that the parents – Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were the killers. Overnight the harried, tragic figures of parenthood were converted to a pair of cold blooded murderers. Avirook Sen’s book is an account of the investigation that followed the murder of a child who would have turned 14 the night she was murdered. While it is not a watertight account, this is certainly a solid retelling of this horrific event.
Right from the morning on which Aarushi’s body was discovered on the bed, the investigation undertaken by the Police was a shambles. A crowd of people walked in and out of the room and believe it or not the entire room was cleaned and washed before anyone even thought of arcane things like forensics or crime scene photography. There is a sort of innate trust that a commoner places on the policing system but even if that were to be kept aside, there is a degree of competence we expect from a working professional which were totally absent here. According to Sen, when they failed to find any sort of evidence to help them proceed the Police went ahead and did a press meeting in which they made a fantastic announcement that there was dirty sex involved in the murder. This was a time when news channels were competing for better ratings and like the smart people they were, the determination was made that nothing brings in more ratings than a double homicide with a sexual undertone added to it. What a lot of them forgot or chose to ignore was that calling a 13 year old child a sexually promiscuous individual would have been disrespectful to the extreme. In the race to win more ratings, such minor humane feelings were swept under the carpet. The media frenzy reached such a level that the Supreme Court finally intervened and asked to stop ‘trial by media’ and focus on the courts instead.
By the time the CBI comes on board, the public and media pressure became rather intense and the first team led by Arun Kumar gets on the job. But before it all begins to make sense there is a change of guard at the top of the CBI. As with all leadership changes, there is a team reshuffle and the next set of investigators are called in. This is where Sen reserves his most acerbic criticism for the investigators A.G.L Kaul and Dr. Dahiya who in more fancy language he calls incompetent, blundering egoists whose only objective was to close the case no matter what it took. Sen points out multiple instances where he questions the credibility of Kaul and also calls his deductions as farfetched and bordering on the fantastic. The case lands up in court and the Talwars are declared guilty. Even here Sen highlights that even before the hearing commenced on the case, the judge presiding over the case had decided that the parents were guilty. The events that follow this murder are shocking to behold and one that we hope never befalls on another individual.
The biggest turn off for this book is that it is not an objective account. Right from the start, the author subtly puts the suggestion across that the Talwars are both innocent. Even when scathing criticism is poured on the court, the media, the witnesses, the police and CBI the Talwars are not given even a customary second glance. As a reader, I do not know who the actual perpetrators of this crime were but Sen makes no secret of the fact that he is on the side of the Talwars here. This is the biggest undoing of this book. A combination of bad luck, incompetence and political interference made the case the mess it is but the innocence of the parents is not something that the reader can decide solely on the basis of this book.
The author doesn’t try to play the detective but sticks with the facts and goes for a retelling which is commendable. This is a harrowing account of how the justice system can go wrong and fail our expectations.
Note : In case you are interested in this story, don’t miss out on Meghna Gulzar’s fantastic movie ’Talvar’ starring the brilliant Irrfan Khan.
We humans have this nature of forgetting even the most grisly things which are not directly connected to us and so happened with the double murder case until the time the CBI announced that the parents – Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were the killers. Overnight the harried, tragic figures of parenthood were converted to a pair of cold blooded murderers. Avirook Sen’s book is an account of the investigation that followed the murder of a child who would have turned 14 the night she was murdered. While it is not a watertight account, this is certainly a solid retelling of this horrific event.
Right from the morning on which Aarushi’s body was discovered on the bed, the investigation undertaken by the Police was a shambles. A crowd of people walked in and out of the room and believe it or not the entire room was cleaned and washed before anyone even thought of arcane things like forensics or crime scene photography. There is a sort of innate trust that a commoner places on the policing system but even if that were to be kept aside, there is a degree of competence we expect from a working professional which were totally absent here. According to Sen, when they failed to find any sort of evidence to help them proceed the Police went ahead and did a press meeting in which they made a fantastic announcement that there was dirty sex involved in the murder. This was a time when news channels were competing for better ratings and like the smart people they were, the determination was made that nothing brings in more ratings than a double homicide with a sexual undertone added to it. What a lot of them forgot or chose to ignore was that calling a 13 year old child a sexually promiscuous individual would have been disrespectful to the extreme. In the race to win more ratings, such minor humane feelings were swept under the carpet. The media frenzy reached such a level that the Supreme Court finally intervened and asked to stop ‘trial by media’ and focus on the courts instead.
By the time the CBI comes on board, the public and media pressure became rather intense and the first team led by Arun Kumar gets on the job. But before it all begins to make sense there is a change of guard at the top of the CBI. As with all leadership changes, there is a team reshuffle and the next set of investigators are called in. This is where Sen reserves his most acerbic criticism for the investigators A.G.L Kaul and Dr. Dahiya who in more fancy language he calls incompetent, blundering egoists whose only objective was to close the case no matter what it took. Sen points out multiple instances where he questions the credibility of Kaul and also calls his deductions as farfetched and bordering on the fantastic. The case lands up in court and the Talwars are declared guilty. Even here Sen highlights that even before the hearing commenced on the case, the judge presiding over the case had decided that the parents were guilty. The events that follow this murder are shocking to behold and one that we hope never befalls on another individual.
The biggest turn off for this book is that it is not an objective account. Right from the start, the author subtly puts the suggestion across that the Talwars are both innocent. Even when scathing criticism is poured on the court, the media, the witnesses, the police and CBI the Talwars are not given even a customary second glance. As a reader, I do not know who the actual perpetrators of this crime were but Sen makes no secret of the fact that he is on the side of the Talwars here. This is the biggest undoing of this book. A combination of bad luck, incompetence and political interference made the case the mess it is but the innocence of the parents is not something that the reader can decide solely on the basis of this book.
The author doesn’t try to play the detective but sticks with the facts and goes for a retelling which is commendable. This is a harrowing account of how the justice system can go wrong and fail our expectations.
Note : In case you are interested in this story, don’t miss out on Meghna Gulzar’s fantastic movie ’Talvar’ starring the brilliant Irrfan Khan.
informative
slow-paced
An intense book on the infamous double murder back in 2008. Very well written and it shows the effort the author put in research and gathering the material for this.
P. S. Dont judge anyone based on the book and its best to keep it in the sense its meant to be- as an account of what happened. Its impossible to judge what happened on that fateful night based on this book. The only conclusion that can be drawn is how rotten our judicial system is and how far people can go to price their theories right.
P. S. Dont judge anyone based on the book and its best to keep it in the sense its meant to be- as an account of what happened. Its impossible to judge what happened on that fateful night based on this book. The only conclusion that can be drawn is how rotten our judicial system is and how far people can go to price their theories right.
Avirook Sen has taken painstaking attempt to cast light on the infamous Aarushi - Hemraj case which became a sensation in the year 2008 thanks to the media. this book is a must read for everyone who ought to know the current situation of our age old jurisdiction system. the one thing the author has tried to instill in our minds is that the Talwars are not guilty. I too have come to a partial conclusion that they are not guilty too. this book displays how careless investigations of the case took place. the most simple pieces of evidences were disregarded as being non admissible. this is a case which in no way can produce a verdict with all the evidences obtained yet. but how clever our justice would have been to come go a verdict even with those minimalistic clues!! it shows how cleverly the CBI rendered the witnesses' statements to force any reader to get convinced that only the Talwars would have done this brutal double killing. all I wish is that the case is reopened and a thorough investigation is done (atleast this time) so that the culprit who I believe is still out there running freely gets the conviction and the innocents let free to go. A great work Sen. it's now time for the country to make sure this happens.
challenging
dark
informative
medium-paced
Picked this one up with huge expectations. Sen is a gifted writer. My introduction to him as a writer was that Open piece where he recounts his days at NewsX. The book has the same easy flow of narrative and delves deep into the dramatis personae. However, there was quite a bit lacking as well. Sen starts over from the primary evidence collected by the police and the CBI, and traces how things got bungled up eventually. So far, so good. But as various reviews (particularly, the one in Fountain Ink) have pointed out, he does seem to be going easy on the Talwars. The thoroughness with which he examines Krishna and Rajkumar, or the way he goes into the history of Kaul and Shyam Lal, is absent when dealing with the Talwars. He offers no reason for the CBI to maliciously go after the couple the way he says the agency did. It is unclear throughout the book what the CBI (or indeed, the individual officers) had to gain from framing the Talwars. Their connections with key people in the forensic laboratory and even the police is not made much of. The book reveals as much as it hides.
PS: After I had finished reading the book, I read about the panel discussion at the book's launch where Sen was patently rude to Ellen Barry who had been less than charitable in her review of the book. That kind of cheesed me off, post-facto.
PS: After I had finished reading the book, I read about the panel discussion at the book's launch where Sen was patently rude to Ellen Barry who had been less than charitable in her review of the book. That kind of cheesed me off, post-facto.