Was Arushi sample switched? CBI says still probing

Arushi,14,a student of Delhi Public School,Noida,was murdered in her Jalvayu Vihar Apartment in Noida on the night of May 15-16,2008. Family help Hemraj was found murdered the next day on the terrace of the house after which Noida police arrested Arushi’s father Dr Rajesh Talwar.

He was later released following a clean chit from CBI.

After taking over investigation of the case from Noida police on May 31 last year,the CBI named household helps in the area — Krishna,Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal — as accused and maintained that there had been an attempt to sexually assault her. To confirm this,the agency sent a slide of Arushi’s vaginal swabs from the District Hospital,Noida,to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD),Hyderabad.

The CDFD reportedly informed the agency that “there was no semen in the slide”,and that evidence on the slide was not that of Arushi. The findings,sources said,suggested that someone had switched the original sample at the District Hospital.

After Arushi’s murder,Dr Sunil Dohere of Noida District Hospital had drawn vaginal swabs and claimed that there was some white discharge which suggested seminal fluid. But his senior,Dr S C Singhal,who is now retired,said no semen was found in slides prepared from the swabs. The CBI sent one of these slides to Hyderabad but did not investigate the two different claims by doctors of the same hospital.

The Noida police today said that when the case was handed over to the CBI,all documents and samples were also handed over. Noida’s Superintendent of Police (City) Ashok Tripathi told Newsline: “We cannot investigate anything in it as it is already with the CBI. The case is still open — CBI is hopefully working out the case.”

Krishna and Rajkumar are still in Nepal and Vijay Mandal is in Bihar. Rajkumar’s lawyer Naresh Yadav said,“It is a case of massive irresponsibility on the part of the CBI.”

Asked about the report that his daughter’s vaginal swabs might have been tampered with,Dr Rajesh Talwar said this had “disturbed” him and his wife Nupur Talwar. “The case is with CBI and we cannot ask for re-investigation but the agency should reinvestigate if needed,” he said. “I desperately want to know who murdered my daughter.”