MURDER MOST FOWL: ARUSHI WON'T JUST GO AWAY

The Arushi murder case keeps throwing up nasty surprises that all point to a massive cover-up operation in which the hands of both the CBI and the UP police are looking dirtier with each revelation.

It may be recalled that 14 year old Arushi, only child of Dr and Mrs Rajesh Talwar, and Hemraj, their servant, were murdered under most mysterious circumstances on May 15, 2008, in the Talwars' home in NOIDA.

Initially, Arushi's father was arrested for committing both the murders, with the UP police claiming that it had solved the case. It, however, failed to find any evidence to support its claim and the case was handed over to the CBI after a lot of hue and cry. On July 11, 2008, the CBI also announced with much fanfare to the nation that it had solved the case and that Arushi had been murdered by Krishna, Dr Talwar's assistant, Rajkumar, servant of Dr Durrani who was a friend of the Talwars, and Mandal, servant of another neighbour. Following that boast, however, the agency failed to make any worthwhile progress in the case, and soon enough admitted that it too had no proof against anyone. That is where the case stands now.

The latest twist in the seemingly never-ending chain of damning revelations is that the vaginal swab that was sent to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) was not Arushi's at all, but was of an unidentifiable woman! Only the NOIDA police or someone with a motive who had "purchased" unfettered access to forensic evidence gathered by it could have switched the swab. The CBI has known about this for about eight months now, as per a news report.

Yet, instead of filing a case for destruction of evidence, it has formed a committee to look into the "lapse". Lapse? Without the swab, it simply cannot be proved that Arushi had been sexually assaulted. This so-called lapse is no less serious than the murder itself.

This is not the only instance of destruction of evidence that points towards the involvement of well informed and connected individuals. Apparently, both the police and the CBI did not find any incriminating evidence either from Arushi's bedroom, where she was killed, or from the terrace, where her servant Hemraj was found murdered. Surely, three drunk, semi-literate guys could not have been so smart as to destroy all evidence is so professional a manner.

I have written earlier in some detail about how this murder most fowl is a serious indictment of the investigative agencies. The latest development only reinforces that deduction. Arushi , it appears, is just not going to go away.

Does the latest development bring the needle of suspicion back to Arushi's father? Read what I had posted just after the CBI admitted that it had no proof against anyone.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Just four days back, I had written that the CBI, which had taken over the sensational Arushi murder case and claimed with much fanfare on July 11, 2008, that it had solved the case, was unlikely to file a charge sheet against any of the three accused whom they had arrested. On September 4, Vijay Mandal was granted bail by a court on the ground that the CBI had no proof to name him as an accused.

Today, India’s premier investigative agency has surprised the nation by throwing in the towel. It has finally admitted that it has found no proof against anyone in the case. Worse, it has announced a reward of Rs1 lakh for anyone who gives them further information in the case.

Even when the CBI hid claimed on July 11 that it had solved the case with arrest of Krishna, Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal, there were serious doubts in my mind about its claims because some vital points had been ignored. They were as relevant on that date as they are today and merit being repeated here:

• Nothing heard by the Talwars. The CBI had stated on July 11 that they had physically opened the door to Arushi’s room and found that nothing could be heard from her parents’ bedroom with the AC running. It was also mentioned that upon being assaulted by the accused, Arushi tried to shout, but she had a bad throat. The trespass into Arushi’s bedroom was not done by an individual making a careful entry. Four men under the influence of liquor entered her room in the still of the night, manifestly with the intention of sexually exploiting her. In her room, they even had a fight, due to which, as per the CBI, Hemraj left the room in a huff. Whether the other three did assault her sexually or not before or after hitting her with a blunt weapon is not clear. But, it needs no intelligence to understand that four hot-headed drunk men would have made enough of a racket in Arushi’s room for quite a while. Dr and Mrs Talwar were not sedated. It is really difficult to believe that they just did not hear the commotion, if not the muted cry from the bad throat of Arushi. Yet, the CBI chose not to subject Dr Talwar to a narco test. That too despite one of his polygraph tests not yielding a satisfactory result.

• Blood stains on Rajkumar’s shirt. The CBI has obviously not found incriminating bloodstains on Rajkumar’s shirt that they had sent for analysis. The question is: what about the shirts of Krishna and Mandal? Krishna was, as per his relatives, sleeping with them in a small room all through the night. If he did manage to quietly slip out, how come when he came back, he changed his clothes and hid those that were bloodstained, yet undiscovered, without anyone getting to know about it? What about Mandal’s ‘murder’ clothes? Where are the clothes that Dr Talwar was wearing that night?

• Destruction of all forensic evidence. No incriminating forensic evidence at all was found by either the police or the CBI from Arushi’s bedroom and the terrace where Hemraj was killed. Were three drunk guys having no criminal background so smart that they destroyed it all after committing the crime? Were Dr and Mrs Talwar so foolish and ignorant that they allowed all and sundry to enter Arushi’s room the day after the murder and destroy such evidence?

• Where are the mobiles and the murder weapon? This question was relevant on July 11. But the CBI chose to ignore it then. It is unanswered even today, despite the ‘confessions’ and ‘leads’ obtained during the narco tests. Without them, the CBI will look as foolish as the NOIDA police did earlier, and has no case.

The way both the NOIDA police and the CBI have bungled this case points to a very fundamental malaise that has hollowed the core of India’s ‘elite’ civil services that includes the IPS. In case after case, the professional incompetence and lack of integrity of India’s police officers has been exposed. Yet, nothing happens to them. Heads never roll. All that happens is that the concerned officers are removed from public and media glare for a while by transferring them to another place. Soon all is forgotten. And such officers continue to rise in rank and are entrusted with even more responsibility!

In the Arushi case, while the concerned IPS officers were transferred, one has not heard of even that action being taken against Arun Kumar who, on July 11, claimed that the CBI had found the real murderers and had given a clean chit to Dr Rajesh Talwar, till then the prime accused, without subjecting him to narco analysis like the other accused were.

Be warned. This is the kind of material that may well land up heading the BSF, CRPF, CBI, IB, RAW, NSG, NSC and more. Is it a surprise that 61 years after Independence, these ‘elite’ police officers have not been able to effect any fundamental organisational and functional changes in a 19th century police set up put in place by a colonial power to subjugate its subjects? If anything, they have made things worse for ordinary citizens with blatant corruption at all levels and an arrogance that would have embarrassed even the British of the Raj.

There is no agency beyond the CBI that can question it for its failures. India’s politicians, who should have had the vision and the responsibility to set things right, have led from the front to corrupt this and other organisations by using them as private agencies for petty and partisan political and personal purposes. When the real rot is right at the very top, how can you expect integrity and honesty from those below?

The Arushi murder case stinks. Something horribly wrong has been and is being done with a disturbing nonchalance. One cannot help shake the feeling that a lot of money has something to do with the botching up of what should have been the one of simplest of cases to solve.

NARCO ANALYSIS: ANOTHER SORDID SCAM?

Dr S Malini, the forensic psychologist who made narco analysis tests famous after multi-crore stamp paper racketeer Abdul Karim Telgi was subjected to one in 2003-04, has been sacked by the Karnataka government for forging her birth details and falsely stating that she has Masters in Science degree instead of the MA (psychology) degree that she actually does. Also, despite holding a government job, she is working as a consulting specialist at a private hospital.

Dr Malini is not new to controversy. There have been complaints about her earlier too. In fact in December 2008, the Karnataka police had asked the government to dismiss her on grounds of being unsuitable for the job. The police had then alleged that her way of conducting narco tests was "unprofessional" and that she was willfully leaking details of the tests to the media even before they were given to the investigating officers. As per the police, she leaked information to TV channel Aaj Tak on the narco analysis on Fahad Ali, one of the two Al Badr men arrested in October 2006 by the Mysore police on charge of planning terror strikes in Mysore and Bangalore. Later she leaked to the same channel the CDs of narco analysis done on the brother of Shahid, arrested by the Andhra Pradesh police in connection with the terror attack in Hyderabad in 2005. Shahid was suspected to have been involved in the Indian Institute of Science attack in Bangalore in December 2005.

There is much more. When Dr Malini had coaxed a confession out of Telgi, the CBI had dismissed it as unreliable. Why? Probably because in the test he had named many senior politicians, including Sharad Pawar, as being neck-deep in the huge racket. But the same CBI went back to her when it took over the Arushi murder case from the police and asked her to carry out narco tests on Rajkumar, Krishna and Vijay Mandal. Based on the results of the tests, Arun Kumar, Joint Director in charge of the investigations, held a press conference and announced with great bravado that the three of them had killed Arushi and that the case had been solved.

With the same confidence with which NOIDA police had declared Arushi's father Dr Rajesh Talwar guilty of murdering her, the CBI exonerated him. That too without subjecting him to a narco test, despite the many unsolved riddles surrounding his activities on the night of the murder and later. Subsequently, the CBI had serious egg on its face when it failed to file a charge sheet against any of the three accused who had confessed during Dr Malini's narco test because no evidence could be found by the agency to back the narco report.

As per NDTV, nothing was revealed in the narco test on one of the accused Krishna. But after senior CBI officials landed up in Bangalore that very evening, the alleged confessions emerged. NDTV also says that in August last year, the CBI team probing the sister Abhaya murder told the court that Dr Malini's video CD of the narco analysis test was made at 6.20 am, which means that it was made at her home and not at the laboratory. The CBI also received a tampered CD instead of 3 original CDs. Based on this, a Kerala High Court judge said: "I have no doubt that the edited and manipulated CDs and report on Narco Analysis by Dr Malini may mislead the investigation."

No one has yet spoken about the narco test Dr Malini had carried out on millionaire Moninder Singh Pandher in the that shocking Nithari case where a number of children were sexually exploited and then killed and eaten over a period of more than a year. His answers were telecast on many channels and there was nothing in them to implicate him in any of those heinous acts. Even then, when I watched him answering questions during the test, I had that uncomfortable feeling that he was not fully in a trance. It appeared to me then that the required dosage of the truth serum had perhaps been erroneously not administered, due to which he was in control of his answers. At the end of it, when he got up, there was a peculiarly triumphant smile on his face that seemed to say that he had done it! Then of course, there was not even a whiff that something was amiss in the narco tests, so I had to reluctantly dismiss the doubts from my mind. Perhaps someone needs to look at that CD again.

Now, with Dr Malini's role and integrity under serious cloud, I cannot help but wonder whether the CBI's investigations into the Arushi and Nithari cases have been transparent. Manifestly rigged narco tests on three accused to wrongly blame them for Arushi's murder, no narco test on Dr Rajesh Talwar and probably a rigged narco test on Moninder Singh Pandher to exonerate him, do not generate the confidence that a professional investigative agencies efforts should. I am not saying that Dr Talwar and Pandher are guilty. But something does stink here.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Readers may also read:
1. Arushi murder case: The CBI goofs up too!
2. Arushi case: A damning indictment of investigative agencies.

ARUSHI CASE: A DAMNING INDICTMENT OF INVESTIGATIVE AGENCIES

Just four days back, I had written that the CBI, which had taken over the sensational Arushi murder case and claimed with much fanfare on July 11, 2008, that it had solved the case, was unlikely to file a charge sheet against any of the three accused whom they had arrested. On September 4, Vijay Mandal was granted bail by a court on the ground that the CBI had no proof to name him as an accused.

Today, India’s premier investigative agency has surprised the nation by throwing in the towel. It has finally admitted that it has found no proof against anyone in the case. Worse, it has announced a reward of Rs1 lakh for anyone who gives them further information in the case.

Even when the CBI had claimed on July 11 that it had solved the case with arrest of Krishna, Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal, there were serious doubts in my mind about its claims because some vital points had been ignored. They were as relevant on that date as they are today and merit being repeated here:

• Nothing heard by the Talwars. The CBI had stated on July 11 that they had physically opened the door to Arushi’s room and found that nothing could be heard from her parents’ bedroom with the AC running. It was also mentioned that upon being assaulted by the accused, Arushi tried to shout, but she had a bad throat. The trespass into Arushi’s bedroom was not done by an individual making a careful entry. Four men under the influence of liquor entered her room in the still of the night, manifestly with the intention of sexually exploiting her. In her room, they even had a fight, due to which, as per the CBI, Hemraj left the room in a huff. Whether the other three did assault her sexually or not before or after hitting her with a blunt weapon is not clear. But, it needs no intelligence to understand that four hot-headed drunk men would have made enough of a racket in Arushi’s room for quite a while. Dr and Mrs Talwar were not sedated. It is really difficult to believe that they just did not hear the commotion, if not the muted cry from the bad throat of Arushi. Yet, the CBI chose not to subject Dr Talwar to a narco test. That too despite one of his polygraph tests not yielding a satisfactory result.

• Blood stains on Rajkumar’s shirt. The CBI has obviously not found incriminating bloodstains on Rajkumar’s shirt that they had sent for analysis. The question is: what about the shirts of Krishna and Mandal? Krishna was, as per his relatives, sleeping with them in a small room all through the night. If he did manage to quietly slip out, how come when he came back, he changed his clothes and hid those that were bloodstained, yet undiscovered, without anyone getting to know about it? What about Mandal’s ‘murder’ clothes? Where are the clothes that Dr Talwar was wearing that night?

• Destruction of all forensic evidence. No incriminating forensic evidence at all was found by either the police or the CBI from Arushi’s bedroom and the terrace where Hemraj was killed. Were three drunk guys having no criminal background so smart that they destroyed it all after committing the crime? Were Dr and Mrs Talwar so foolish and ignorant that they allowed all and sundry to enter Arushi’s room the day after the murder and destroy such evidence?

• Where are the mobiles and the murder weapon? This question was relevant on July 11. But the CBI chose to ignore it then. It is unanswered even today, despite the ‘confessions’ and ‘leads’ obtained during the narco tests. Without them, the CBI will look as foolish as the NOIDA police did earlier, and has no case.

The way both the NOIDA police and the CBI have bungled this case points to a very fundamental malaise that has hollowed the core of India’s ‘elite’ civil services that includes the IPS. In case after case, the professional incompetence and lack of integrity of India’s police officers has been exposed. Yet, nothing happens to them. Heads never roll. All that happens is that the concerned officers are removed from public and media glare for a while by transferring them to another place. Soon all is forgotten. And such officers continue to rise in rank and are entrusted with even more responsibility!

In the Arushi case, while the concerned IPS officers were transferred, one has not heard of action being taken even against Arun Kumar who, on July 11, claimed that the CBI had found the real murderers and had given a clean chit to Dr Rajesh Talwar, till then the prime accused, without subjecting him to narco analysis like the other accused were.

Be warned. This is the kind of material that may well land up heading the BSF, CRPF, CBI, IB, RAW, NSG, NSC and more. Is it a surprise that 61 years after Independence, these ‘elite’ police officers have not been able to effect any fundamental organisational and functional changes in a 19th century police set up put in place by a colonial power to subjugate its subjects? If anything, they have made things worse for ordinary citizens with blatant corruption at all levels and an arrogance that would have embarrassed even the British of the Raj.

There is no agency beyond the CBI that can question it for its failures. India’s politicians, who should have had the vision and the responsibility to set things right, have led from the front to corrupt this and other organisations by using them as private agencies for petty and partisan political and personal purposes. When the real rot is right at the very top, how can you expect integrity and honesty from those below?

The Arushi murder case stinks. Something horribly wrong has been and is being done with a disturbing nonchalance. One cannot help shake the feeling that a lot of money has something to do with the botching up of what should have been the one of simplest of cases to solve.

ARUSHI MURDER CASE: THE CBI GOOFS UP TOO!

100 days after it took charge of investigations into the sensation Arushi Hemraj murder case, India’s premier investigative agency, the CBI, has serious egg on its face.

To briefly recapitulate, 14 year old Arushi Talwar of NOIDA was murdered on May 15, 2008 in her bedroom. A couple of days later, the body of her domestic help, Hemraj, was also recovered from the terrace of the flat. Both had been killed on the same day. Both were hit by a blunt weapon and also had their throats slit.

Initially, the NOIDA police which was investigating the case had confidently claimed that Arushi was murdered by her own father, Dr Rajesh Talwar, who had also killed Hemraj. It also claimed that he had confessed. Subsequently, however, it back tracked completely saying that no evidence had been found against him. There was then much criticism of the manner in which senior police officers had quite insensitively handled the issue and blamed Dr Talwar. As a result, all senior officers involved in the investigation were summarily transferred and the case was handed over to the CBI.

The CBI began investigations with much fanfare in a seemingly professional manner. It soon arrested Krishna, Dr Talwar’s assistant, and Rajkumar, servant of Dr Durrani, friend of the Talwars. Later, Vijay Mandal, the servant of a neighbour was also arrested. They were subjected to polygraph tests and narco analysis, during which Krishna and Rajkumar ‘confessed’ that they had committed both the murders along with Mandal.

The CBI also seized a blood-stained shirt from the room of Rajkumar and gave the impression that he was wearing that shirt at the time of the crime. But, despite all the tests and the confessions, it could not trace either the murder weapon or the mobile phones of Arushi and Hemraj which were allegedly taken by Rajkumar and Krishna respectively and destroyed. Simultaneously, the CBI all but absolved Dr Talwar of any involvement in the twin murders, as a result of which he was released from custody on July 12, 2008.

With gaping holes still visible in the CBI’s theory, the Joint Director in charge of the investigations, Arun Kumar, announced at a press conference on July 11 that the case had been solved. Much in a manner reminiscent of the infamous press conference of the NOIDA police, he exonerated Dr Talwar with the same confidence that the Meerut Range IG had found him guilty, and declared that the three guys mentioned above were the real killers. A few days later, the retiring Director of CBI also claimed that the case had been fully solved.

Even at that time, I had serious doubts about the CBI’s claims because a few vital pieces of the puzzle were just not falling into place. But, I gave the CBI the benefit of doubt much against my elementary commonsense, on the ground that despite these odd pieces, the CBI must have got it right enough to make the claim.

Today, the CBI’s case has manifestly begun to fall apart. Today, a local Ghaziabad court granted bail to Vijay Mandal on the ground that the CBI did not have any proof to name him as an accused. A couple of days back, the agency had admitted that it had made no progress in terms of material evidence. All that it had after months of investigation were the confessions made during narco analysis which are not admissible as evidence. So, it was trying to get one of the accused to turn approver. It has obviously failed to do that too.

The main points which bothered me then and still do, are:

• Nothing heard by the Talwars. The CBI had stated on July 11 that they had physically opened the door to Arushi’s room and found that nothing could be heard from her parents’ bedroom with the AC running. It was also mentioned that upon being assaulted by the accused, Arushi tried to shout, but she had a bad throat. The trespass into Arushi’s bedroom was not done by an individual making a careful entry. Four men under the influence of liquor entered her room in the still of the night, manifestly with the intention of sexually exploiting her. In her room, they even had a fight, due to which, as per the CBI, Hemraj left the room in a huff. Whether the other three did assault her sexually or not before or after hitting her with a blunt weapon is not clear. But, it needs no intelligence to understand that four hot-headed drunk men would have made enough of a racket in Arushi’s room for quite a while. Dr and Mrs Talwar were not sedated. It is really difficult to believe that they just did not hear the commotion, if not the muted cry from the bad throat of Arushi. Yet, the CBI chose not to subject Dr Talwar to a narco test. That too despite one of his polygraph tests not yielding a satisfactory result.

• Blood stains on Rajkumar’s shirt. The CBI has obviously not found incriminating bloodstains on Rajkumar’s shirt that they had sent for analysis. The question is: what about the shirts of Krishna and Mandal? Krishna was, as per his relatives, sleeping with them in a small room all through the night. If he did manage to quietly slip out, how come when he came back, he changed his clothes and hid those that were bloodstained, yet undiscovered, without anyone getting to know about it? What about Mandal’s ‘murder’ clothes? Where are the clothes that Dr Talwar was wearing that night?

• Destruction of all forensic evidence. No incriminating forensic evidence at all was found by either the police or the CBI from Arushi’s bedroom and the terrace where Hemraj was killed. Were three drunk guys having no criminal background so smart that they destroyed it all after committing the crime? Were Dr and Mrs Talwar so foolish and ignorant that they allowed all and sundry to enter Arushi’s room the day after the murder and destroy such evidence?

• Where are the mobiles and the murder weapon? This question was relevant on July 11. But the CBI chose to ignore it then. It is unanswered even today, despite the ‘confessions’ and ‘leads’ obtained during the narco tests. Without them, the CBI will look as foolish as the NOIDA police did earlier, and has no case.

In the next couple of weeks, both Krishna an Rajkumar will have to be released if the CBI is not able to file a charge sheet against them. As things stand now, it is highly unlikely that it will be able to do so. It is indeed amazing that both the NOIDA police and the CBI have failed to solve this case, which actually should have been among the easiest to solve. Both have goofed up thoroughly, and both have been overly confident about their investigations and claims.

The fact that both investigative agencies have egg on their face points to three main possibilities. First, the real culprits are really smart guys who know what it takes to be a step ahead of the police. Two, some police officials were paid off during the initial investigations by somebody, a fact alluded to by UP police itself. Three, there is a serious professionalism deficit in the police and the CBI.

One also cannot shake the feeling that the whole case stinks. And that stench emanates from the integrity of the investigators, be it NOIDA police or the CBI.

Unfortunately, there is no agency beyond the CBI to look into every aspect of this sensational case. Even if there was one, the result might not have been very different. Unless the professional, motivational and integrity levels of individuals who man these organisations are addressed holistically and brought up to minimum acceptable levels, things are going to be just as they are. And, time and again ordinary killers are going to be made to look better than the tough, smart and thorough professionals that the investigators should be, but are not.

This post was also published in Bloggers' Park Mumbai Mirror and Bangalore Mirror.

NOT HONOUR KILLING BUT MURDER OF HONOUR

For the last one week, India has been gripped by a sensational double murder in NOIDA on the outskirts of Delhi. A 14 year old girl Arushi, the only child of dentist parents, and their 45 year old servant, Hemraj, were murdered under the most mysterious circumstances on May 15, 2008.

For one week, the local police displayed their famed ineptitude in failing to follow even the very basic rules of investigation. First, after a most perfunctory visit to the flat of Dr Rajesh Talwar, the police hastily declared Hemraj as the prime suspect and even announced a reward of Rs 20,000 to any one giving information about him. This, while the body of Hemraj was decomposing on the very terrace of the flat where the body of Arushi was found! The police simply did not bother to even look around, though bloodstains were there to be seen leading to the terrace whose door was locked. Even after Hemraj’s decomposed body was discovered after two days, they took a couple of more days to examine the closed clinic of Dr Talwar in the same premises!

Much can be written about the complete lack of professionalism in, and lackadaisical attitude of, the police which had earlier been exposed in the most horrifying Nithari killings NOIDA itself in which a businessman and his servant killed more than a dozen children over a period of more than one year after exploiting them sexually. The servant had, in fact, gone to the unbelievable extent of eating the flesh of some of his victims.

Dr Rajesh Talwar was finally arrested on May 23 by the police for murdering his only daughter and his servant. He was apparently having an extra marital affair with a colleague, Dr Anita Durrani. According to the police, his daughter Arushi was against this and had discussed it with the servant Hemraj because of which the two had come close to each other.

On the fateful night, Dr Talwar, who had already downed a couple of drinks, saw the two in a somewhat compromising position. On the pretext of talking to Hemraj, he took him to the terrace and killed him. He then came back and had some more whisky. It is not exactly clear what led him to kill his daughter after that. According to some accounts, he killed her because she threatened to expose him. Others say that when he confronted her about her relationship with Hemraj, she told him that he had no right to say anything as he himself was having an extra marital affair.

A few details about the minor Arushi. An MMS has been floating on the internet for over a year now in which this then 12 or 13 year old girl is shown getting out of her school uniform and being fondled by an unidentified man after she gets naked. India News has been showing part of this clip all this evening. May 24 was to be her birthday and a party to celebrate it had been planned by her, yes, at a pub.

This most foul murder of honour is being casually branded by some as one more case of ‘honour killing’, the likes of which have been taking place in the entire Indian sub continent for centuries. Far from it, the whole case raises some very disturbing questions. Is our educated urban society is any more progressive and liberated than the rural one where honour killings enjoy widespread societal support to this day? Are urban parents neglecting their children in their obsessive race to get richer faster? Are such parents themselves promoters of a permissive culture which they do not want to see their children become victims of? Do the parental rules of permissiveness still have the same uncompromising gender bias that was there say 50 years back?

It is easy to suggest that family values have broken down in India, on the basis of this horrifying double murder. Let us not pretend that 50 years back there was no sex and that there were great moral values all round. The morals, then and now, as shown by Dr Talwar, were and remain mainly for women. Men were, and continue to be, predators with an unquestionable right to hunt. Men can’t do it alone, without a ‘prey’. So, women have always been the other inescapable party to sex. But earlier, women worked overtime to ensure that no one got a whiff of what they were up to. Now, at least in some sections of urban society, they flaunt it, much like men do. A city provides women the shelter of anonymity as well as easy concealment from parents. Often even when parents come to know, they pretend not to.

But when it comes to male children, parents, as always, view such permissive activities indulgently and usually with pride! Their concern for their boys is mainly about the possibility of getting AIDS, not about character or morals. Similarly, extra marital affairs are not a new phenomenon. Only the openness about them is, again in some sections of urban society only. Here too, apart from a miniscule section of society, for men it remains some sort of a badge of honour while women continue to work overtime to hide their part.

The killing of Arushi by her father, clearly with the assistance/complicity of her mother, Nupur, chillingly highlights this hypocrisy and the double standards that have always defined mainstream societal moral values in India. Nupur, in classic fashion, has adjusted to and is living with the escapades of her husband. But, when it comes to her only daughter, she is as rigid and uncompromising as Dr Talwar is. And they both had manifestly no qualms about killing their only child.

This is no honour killing. This a most foul murder of honour. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar had little time for their daughter. If they were so concerned about the morals that expected from a girl child, then they should have known better than letting Arushi grow up on her own in the company of servants rather than theirs. As the MMS shows, Arushi was not only sexually active but was bold enough to be captured on film even before she entered her teens. With her working parents having little time for her and with her father openly engaging in extra marital affairs, there was really only one way Arushi was headed.

There are many Arushis and Dr Talwars out there. Fortunately, most of the Dr Talwars and their wives do not so gruesomely murder honour when their daughters hold up a mirror to them, like Arushi did. This mirror, not surprisingly, only a few can see and accept with full responsibility. The lesson for them is that the only ‘safe’ way is for them to lead their children by example and love and time.

Unfortunately, in this materially booming environment, time is the one commodity that urban, educated, working parents are not able to give to their children. And, despite all their awareness and modernity, there are still a few who will kill their girl child out of a sickening sense of honour while taking no responsibility whatsoever for the mess that they have created in the first place. Fortunately, such demented parents are really very few.