Thaindian News

New Delhi, May 9 (IANS) The Supreme Court Wednesday said that a magistrate’s court could not have appreciated the entire material before it while rejecting the closure report filed by the CBI in the 2008 Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj double murder.

An apex court bench of Justice A.K. Patnaik and Justice J.S. Khehar said this when senior counsel Harish Salve, appearing for teenager Aarushi’s mother and accused Nupur Talwar, told the court that the magistrate in Uttar Pradesh did not see the other material before rejecting the closure report.

The senior counsel told the court that the magistrate took note of the medical opinion that was an improvement on the original post mortem report. Salve told the court that “if the magistrate had seen the file it would have been a completely different evaluation”.

Aarushi, 14, was found murdered at her Noida residence May 16, 2008. The body of her family’s domestic help Hemraj was found the next day on the terrace of the house.

Justice Khehar said that “if we take a call on this and come to a conclusion then this matter is over”.

The court observation came after Salve pressed his point that the magistrate had not viewed the material in its entirety before rejecting the closure report.

Salve said that the “closure report was filed to be re-opened”.

In the course of the arguments, Justice Patnaik asked Salve that all he was saying that the magistrate had not applied the mind and appreciated the evidence. “All you say is that the magistrate has not applied the mind and appreciated the available material,” said Justice Patnaik.

In December 2010, the CBI filed a closure report in the case before the special court in Ghaziabad, but stated that it had circumstantial evidence against the Aarushi’s dentist parents.

However, the Talwars approached the trial court against the closure, demanding further investigation. The court too rejected the closure report, and in a dramatic twist, summoned both the parents to face trial and directed the CBI to prosecute them.