The Aarushi Case Diary

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Tangled trial Aarushi’s parents have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Photo: Tehelka Archives
Tangled trial Aarushi’s parents have been sentenced to life imprisonment. Photo: Tehelka Archives

We love playing detectives. Perhaps, this might be because we are fascinated with the word ‘why’. Or it must be the idea of unravelling a ball of wool around a dark room, waiting to see it unfurl and lead the way. Whatever be the motive, the love that we have for thrillers has inadvertently set us upon the track of finding answers. Mysteries cannot simply end on a note of suspense for us. They have to begin with that odd crime and develop into a plot of deception only to be revealed in vivid detail for our pleasure. The same cannot be said about Avirook Sen’s Aarushi. Unlike murder mysteries that speak of the crime, the suspects and the investigation, Aarushi does not switch the light-bulb on for you. It does not give you the thrill of finding the ‘who’ and it certainly does not feed into our fantasy of playing Sherlock Holmes. What it does say is this: A compromised system can never truly be an agent of justice.

Unlike fiction, true crime fiction appeals to the imagination of the reader instantly. A: it is as real as it can get and B: these are names and photographs that tell you that the people who exist with you are possible murderers. It is this appeal that shot Ann Rule, America’s well-known true crime fiction writer to instant fame. No other book could stand in the way of her The stranger beside me when she chronicled the life of Ted Bundy, America’s most wanted serial killer. In a similar fashion, however horrific that may sound, Aarushi, a true and expansive account of the investigation of the Aarushi Talwar murder case, has every ingredient to grab the eyeballs of a reader. It also opens Avirook Sen, the journalist and writer, to a platter of questions ranging from credibility to taking sides. However Sen, to his credit, manages to silence most of his critics. Sifting carefully through one fact after another, Sen opens the case of Aarushi to reveal its biggest mystery — that of the systemic deficiencies within the ruling apparatuses.

aarushi-bookStarting with discrepancies in the collection of evidence, the Pandora’s box of troubles, with respect to the UP Police and cbi, opens in the first section of the book titled ‘The investigation’. While some of it leaves us wondering if we could have been better detectives, other instances are ironically, funny. For example, the chief investigating officer of the Aarushi case uses a ‘dummy’ to recreate the crime scene for no logical reason. Likewise, there are several such examples of incompetence. The disappearance of the vaginal swabs of Aarushi, creation of baseless motives including the 14-year-old indulging in sexual activity with her servant and late discoveries of evidence and a dead body at the crime scene reveal the sad state of affairs at the cbi. Thus, Sen dismantles our romanticised idea of a cbi cop quite brutally.

The second section of the book, ‘The Trial’, weaves the process of judicial enquiry with the botched cbi investigation. As an aftermath of the charge-sheet produced by the incompetent cbi, the case follows a skewed path from day one of the trial. Raising his doubts about the proceedings one by one, Sen makes the reader pause and reflect on the ‘impartial’ nature of the judiciary. Soon, a verdict against the Talwars is passed and the case leaves the reader discomfited. Yet, what chills the reader more than any other gross mistake through the course of the investigation is Sen’s revealing interview with Judge Shyam Lal, who delivered the judgement. This is one of the telling bits of the book. Though critics might find Sen biased towards the Talwars, the book provides enough evidence to support his argument. In fact, at many points, Sen seemed to have taken the role of a lawyer. A glaring minus of the book would be the absence of interviews with Krishna, Vijay and Rajkumar, the other suspects in the case. Since excerpts of their narco-test results, highlighting their possible complicity in the crime, were produced at the end of the book, the interviews would have made imminent sense in balancing the inquiry.

Despite these flaws, Avirook Sen’s Aarushi is an eyeopener, quite literally. There could be a thousand odd reasons to read a book. However, this book is a must-read for us because it tells us an important lesson — God save you if you are at the scene of a crime in India.

deepti@tehelka.com

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