Aide, nurse & US bizman stand as 'family' in court

NOIDA\ALLAHABAD: In his flat, a few lanes from L-32, the apartment in Noida's Jalvayu Vihar (Sector 25) where Aarushi Talwar was murdered in May 2008, her octogenarian grandfather and retired air force officer Balachandra Chitnis felt a sense of relief he hasn't known for years.

"We have suffered a lot. It was our common goal to get our people out of this," Chitnis said on Thursday after his daughter Nupur and son-in-law Rajesh were acquitted by the Allahabad high court. Chitnis (85) and his wife, Lata (75), stay in a flat in L-block. Chitnis said Aarushi was mostly raised by his wife since the time she was brought home from Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, where she was born.

The investigation and the trial were testing times not just for the accused couple but for the rest of the family . Chitnis recalls how AGL Kaul, the second investigating officer of the CBI team that probed the case after Ashwani Kumar took over as CBI director in August 2008, had interrogated him. His tone had been rude to say the least, alleged Chitnis. "I was someone not to be cowed down. I had to tell him as it was," Chitnis said.

Chitnis was guarded about his view on the judgment and said he would wait for some more time. But he said the family was relieved the Talwars would be home now.

Aarushi's aunt Vandana Talwar said she was relieved and "grateful to God for the verdict". "We've suffered a lot as a family for 10 years. We're emotionally drained. I thank those who backed us during trying times. It has been an exhausting journey . We stand vindicated.Justice has been served to Rajesh and Nupur," she said.

At the HC, though, family members of the dentist couple were not present. It was their decade-old clinic manager, a nurse from Rajasthan, and a Sikh friend from the United States who sat patiently inside the courtroom number 40 when a division bench of justices B K Narayana and A K Mishra upheld the Talwars' appeal.

Vikas Sethi, who had been working at the clinic in Noida and stays in Vikas Puri in Delhi, was the first one to embrace the lawyers as the acquittal was announced. Seconds later, Priyanka, a 30-year-old nurse from Narnaul in Rajasthan, ran outside the courtroom to call her parents. "Nupurji is like my mother. I can't tell the story behind it. But Talwars consider me like their daughter since they lost theirs. It is my love for Nupurji that won her reprieve today ," said Priyanka.

Satinder Rekhi had come for the hearing from California. Rekhi, who runs a software firm, had met the Talwars after he read a book and saw a movie on them. "The book and the film opened my eyes to what the helpless couple have gone through. Today , I accompany their lawyers and give them moral support wherever they go."