by Avirook Sen
‘Look, the fact is that I did not know Dr Talwar or anyone in his family. The CBI has used the call records from the day to say this, but the fact is I did not know any of them. I did not know whether they were good or bad. How could I? I had nothing to do with them.
‘I went there because Dr Choudhry asked me to. Even then, I told him, I don’t know these people, it isn’t as if there is a feast there that I have been invited to. But he insisted, so I went along.
‘I saw Dr Rajesh Talwar for the first time the day I went to court to testify [in 2012].’
I asked, ‘But what did you see at the scene on the morning of the 17th?’
‘There was a big crowd there when we reached. Dr Sushil Choudhry started talking to Dr Dinesh Talwar. I left them alone and began looking around and talking to people. I noticed that on the railing outside [of the stairs to the terrace] there were bloodstains. On the railing, not on the stairs. I saw no stains on the stairs.
‘The press all reported there was lots of blood on the stairs. But I’m telling you, there was none.
‘Now, see. There are blood spots on the railing, but nothing on the stairs. But the prints of these stains were not taken. So I saw three or four stains like this and I asked, why haven’t prints been taken, there are so many policemen, officers, on the spot?
‘Slowly, I climbed up the stairs. Then I saw the terrace door was locked. They had not tried to open it. There were bloodstains there too. Means: the murderer had gone up. And I thought, this was great evidence, why weren’t prints taken? There were so many officers there!
‘From there I called up the SP City, Mahesh Mishra. I told him, you had come here, and you had also told me to help out, but what have you done so far? You don’t deserve my help.
‘He said, “Arre bhaisahab, I had told the SHO, he must have forgotten.” Then he came over, and Dataram Nanoria, the first IO, was also there. We asked him, why didn’t you open the door yesterday? He said, “Sir, we could not find the key.” And I said “Saale, yeh koi State Bank ka taala hai?” That you cannot open it without a key, you need permission from headquarters? He was a duffer, that Nanoria.
‘And right there, he brought a brick, and in one blow, the lock broke. I had a feeling that perhaps the murderer had hidden the weapon on the terrace. It happens that way in villages, knives and things they hide in the fields.
‘Nobody had imagined that there would be a dead body there! And the blood. Just all over the terrace.
‘Now I will tell you the real story. Pay attention. Now where a murder takes place, that is where you find a pool of blood. That is where most of the blood is released. Now if we take a body and dump it on a road or in a jungle, there won’t be much blood there. The blood flows out at the spot where the murder takes place. Right?
‘Now this body was on the terrace. There was blood all over the terrace. Even under the body there was a lot of blood. It had been lying for 36 hours in the heat.
‘Hemraj’s throat was slit. And every few seconds, there were bubbles and liquid escaping from the wound.’
Gautam now used his palms to show me how swollen Hemraj’s face was. ‘It was huge, nobody was able to recognize him. Then more policemen arrived on the scene, and I was asking them, what investigation have you done in the last 36 hours? There were palm prints on the walls. It meant a scuffle must have taken place. Hemraj must have struggled with his assailants there.’
‘So, according to you, Hemraj was definitely killed on the terrace.’
‘I’ll tell you. Then these people got a bed sheet from downstairs, and they placed the body in it. So much blood just went on to the bed sheet. It was soaked in blood. Four policemen picked the body up, two on each side, he was a healthy, heavy man. And they rested on each stair as they took the corpse down.
‘And now they say the Talwars killed him downstairs and took the body up. So where was he killed? Where is Hemraj’s blood downstairs?’
Gautam’s words were filled with regret: no one seemed to value experienced policemen any more. ‘The things we can see, people who have been around for five years or ten cannot. But they do not realize this.’
‘But what was the motivation of the CBI to twist the case the way it did?’ I asked.
‘There was no motivation, whether it was UP police or CBI. Just that these people had crossed all the limits of stupidity.
‘In the beginning, when I saw them [the Talwars] on TV, I may have felt their behaviour was abnormal. Then the investigators started saying no one saw them crying. But to base a conclusion on this? That way, no one saw Indira Gandhi cry when Sanjay died!
‘Now, look. What is the story you read? That Aarushi was in her room. Dr Rajesh went there. What did he see? Now, whatever he saw, what would a normal person do? Suppose he had found out about some illicit relations. Would he not simply sack the servant and deal with his daughter? Say he was very angry, would he kill the servant there? In the house? In the same room? Wouldn’t he just get him killed outside and dump the body in drain?’
Gautam had by now made it clear that he did not believe a word of the CBI’s story. Yet he had helped the CBI. I asked him about the police officers he knew on the case, and what he thought of them. He had the highest regard for Arun Kumar, he said, while suggesting that many of the younger IPS officers on the case were incompetent. He emphasized that he fraternized only with people of ‘highest, spotless reputation’.
‘What about Gurdarshan Singh? Did you know him?’
‘He was a very senior officer.’
‘What was his reputation like?’
Gautam gave me a sly smile, thought for some time, and said, ‘Medium.’
I turned to a far more serious subject, his interactions with A.G.L. Kaul. I told Gautam that I knew he had called Arun Kumar for help. Why did he need help?
‘It was more advice.’
‘That is not what I heard.’
‘What did you hear?’
I asked him whether he was under pressure from Kaul to change his testimony because Kaul had some personal information on him.
Gautam gave me another long look. ‘It is best we don’t discuss this.’
‘So were you put under pressure?’
‘Why not drop this subject?’
‘It is important that I know from you.’
‘You know everything already. Please let us not discuss this any more.’
M.S. Dahiya
It was November 2014. A thin, stooped man ambled through the gate of the Forensic Science Laboratory building in Gandhinagar. This was Mohinder Singh Dahiya, who had retired from his position of deputy director, Directorate of Forensic Studies, that very week.
Dr Dahiya took me to the first-floor foyer, in one corner of which was a well-used sofa. As we talked his former colleagues walked past, each one greeting him respectfully.
I began by saying he must be looking forward to some rest after a 35-year career.
‘No, no. I continue as director of the Institute of Forensics, at the Forensic Science University [next door]. And I will be reinstated here as deputy director very soon. Government has taken a decision. Formally, communication may come later.’
‘But you know you will be back?’
‘Yes, yes. They have indicated to me that I will continue to hold both positions.’
Dahiya was in his late sixties, and this would be his eighth extension—very unusual for a government servant, but so were most of the seven he had been offered in previous years.
‘You must be highly valued by the state,’ I said.
‘Yes. Because I have solved many mysteries. Like Godhra, recently Goa, then Aarushi murder case, so many mysteries. Police were confused, but I was able to solve.’
‘Yes, Aarushi . . .’
‘That was only one. But it was a major one, whole country wanted to know. All police, CBI, everyone had failed, but I succeeded.’
Mohinder Dahiya was a success. He was born in the village of Didlan, in Sonepat district, H
aryana, the son of a farmer. He grew up in a joint family that depended solely on agriculture and went to the village primary school till standard eight, and then to secondary school in Sonepat, about 20 kilometres from his village.
Thereafter, he travelled to Sagar University in Madhya Pradesh, where he remained until he completed his PhD. And from then began his seemingly interminable career in forensic science.
Dahiya told me solving crimes started with getting a plausible idea. This, he said, comes from experience and study. ‘I have many books in my house. I study. Here I work during office hours, and then at home another two or three hours, I study and work.’
How did he get his ideas?
‘It is not that I have to go to a quiet place by the river and sit down to think. If you study, ideas come.
‘Like in the Aarushi case. I saw the pictures of the deceased and their head injuries, and I thought these could be caused by a golf stick. And Talwar was a golfer. Similarly, for scalpel. Nature of cut and easy availability. Have you read my report? It is all detailed over there.’
‘I have, and I had a question about it. Your report is a theory that is based on the finding of Hemraj’s blood on a pillow cover in Aarushi’s room. The whole story follows from there. But that information is false.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, it was established during the trial that the pillow cover in question was seized from Hemraj’s room, not Aarushi’s.’
‘I am not aware.’
‘So who gave you that piece of false information?’
‘I was given all information by Mr Kaul, the IO. All the documents. What the post-mortem doctors were saying, we discussed.’
‘But that particular piece of information . . .’
‘Whatever was given to me, I went by that.’
‘Had you worked with Mr Kaul before?’
‘No, this was the first time. But we enjoyed good rapport.’
‘And he never told you at any later stage that the pillow cover was not found in Aarushi’s room?’
‘No, after I submitted my report, my job was done. I was only called by the court in the trial.’
‘So you did not know that in the closure report itself, this issue was clarified, and thereafter in submissions even to the Supreme Court. That it was clear there was no physical evidence of Hemraj’s blood in Aarushi’s room.’
‘I am not aware.’
‘Would your theory have been different if you knew this?’
‘No, no. It was a very clear-cut case of honour killing. I have said in my report. Also there is physical evidence. From the photographs it is clear that there are two impact splatters, two people were killed in Aarushi’s room.’
‘You could tell this from photographs?’
‘Yes. Very clearly.’
‘How come there was no scientific evidence of Hemraj’s blood then? Or anything else.’
‘May have been cleaning. I have said that in my opinion this was the case.’
‘There was no hard evidence then.’
‘I was asked to give my opinion. Now court also has accepted my opinion.’
Two cases don’t establish a pattern, but this is exactly what happened with Dahiya’s other famous theory—on how the fire was started on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra. Dahiya had arrived on that crime scene two months after the event. In his reconstruction he proposed that the mob had boarded the S6 coach having failed to set fire to the train from the outside. They did this by cutting through the vestibules that connected coaches, breaking the door to the coach and then unloading cans of petrol in the compartment.
The trial Judge P.R. Patel agreed with Dahiya’s reconstruction in his judgement, just as Judge Shyam Lal did in the Aarushi case. And like Judge Shyam Lal, Patel left several inconsistencies unexplained. The most significant of these was that none of the survivors from S6 told the court anything about such a raid at all. No one said they saw anyone cutting through canvas, breaking down the sliding doors, splashing petrol, or any such thing. The witnesses saw none of this, but two months after the event Dahiya did.
Judge Patel offered an explanation as to why none of the survivors saw the events that Dahiya’s report was so authoritative about: ‘Admittedly, at the time of the incident [around 8 a.m.] all the doors and windows of the entire train were closed because of the tense atmosphere and the passengers were not in a position to see or identify the assailants, and that too, unknown assailants.’
Judge Patel, relying heavily on Dahiya’s report, concluded that the ghastly crime was the work of a Muslim mob which was instigated by the announcements from a nearby mosque airing its encouragement live through its loudspeakers.
In Gujarat, the Godhra judgement established Dahiya’s reputation as a forensic scientist of rare ability. He acquired the reputation of a man who was able to see things no one else could see or had seen.
‘How did you work out that this was an honour killing?’
‘The situation of the bodies. Murders take place in one location, one body is shifted elsewhere. Cleaning is done. All these factors.’
Dr Dahiya was getting a little restless by now, and I knew I did not have much more time with him. I said, ‘In your testimony you said that Aarushi and Hemraj were engaged in intercourse.’
‘Yes.’
‘How did you know this? Were you there?’
‘It was my opinion.’
‘You stated it as a fact in your testimony.’
‘I was asked for my opinion. I gave my opinion. The court accepted it as a fact.’
‘When you were saying Aarushi was engaged in intercourse, Dr Dahiya, did you once consider that this was a fourteen-year-old girl you were talking about?’
‘I have to go now. People are waiting for me.’
Dr Dahiya disappeared into an office in the corridor in front of us.
I spoke to him over the phone a month later. By then, his extension had been formally confirmed.
Dr S.L. Vaya
Dr Surabhi Vaya continues to live in Gandhinagar, but she is no longer associated with the Forensic Science Lab. ‘After a point it became untenable. I could not stand by and just watch. I have always been outspoken about what is right and what is wrong. But nothing was done to correct the wrongs.’
At the FSL, it is ungrudgingly acknowledged that Dr Vaya built the behavioural science department from almost nothing into one of the best in the country. She started with herself, a toolkit and an assistant. Over two decades, the Gandhinagar lab grew to become one of the best in the country.
What went wrong? In a sentence: She found herself engaged in a power struggle with M.S. Dahiya. Dahiya got his extensions; Dr Vaya left.
The problem, according her, was the kind of attention, acclaim and even money her department was bringing to the institution. ‘Egos were hurt. People like Dahiya made it a point to try and belittle behavioural science in general, because it was gaining rapid recognition, and threatened the importance of their stream of work. Their default position was to oppose anything that came out of the department. The Aarushi case is just one example.’
There were underlying cultural differences as well. Dahiya and Vaya came from completely different backgrounds. She had had a middle-class upbringing in Mysore, and had made her way up in her field casting herself as an independent-minded woman. She never says so herself, but it is hard to believe that her gender would not have been a factor in shaping her peers’ attitude towards her.
‘When Dahiya was submitting his report, we had a meeting, where I said it did not make sense that two diametrically opposite reports are sent from the same institution. His attitude was “you have sent your report, I’ll send mine”, and let us see whose is accepted.
‘Of course it would be easier for the CBI to accept his report at the time. It was unscientific, but it was the position they had taken. I did not want our lab to simply put out reports to please agencies or governments, just to be in their good books. This was happening regularly whe
re Dahiya was concerned. I spoke out against it. We are scientists, not stooges.’
Several years ago, Dr Vaya met the then chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi at a function. He asked about the work being done at the Directorate of Forensic Science and appeared keen on the idea of a dedicated forensic science university. Modi asked her how much it might cost, and Vaya replied that she could get one up and running at a fraction of what was being spent on the chief minister’s security.
On a plot of land allotted by the Modi government, the Forensic Science University has indeed come up. It is where M.S. Dahiya holds the position of director, Institute of Forensics.
Dr Vaya has moved on as well. She is now director, research and development, at the fledgling Raksha Shakti University. It too is a government institution, founded during Narendra Modi’s tenure as chief minister of Gujarat. Its focus is internal security and disciplines related to it. To get to Raksha Shakti University, you have to ask for ‘Mental Chowk’—a well-known mental health institute is close by.
Dr Vaya’s work continues. She would like to restore the importance of her discipline as a tool in investigation. It suffered a major setback with a 2010 Supreme Court ruling which disallowed the use of scientific tests to incriminate suspects. The court ruled that tests without consent violated an individual’s right to privacy, and his right to not give evidence against himself. The court said the test results by themselves were inadmissible because the subject did not have ‘conscious control’ over his responses when they are undertaken.
This is true of narco analysis, where the truth serum induces a trance. But the same cannot be said about non-invasive procedures such as polygraph or brain-mapping tests. However, the clubbing of all the procedures under one ruling made it appear that way.
In practice, the Supreme Court ruling has allowed investigators the opportunity for selective use. In the Nithari killings, for instance, Surinder Koli’s narco narration was accepted in full by both the CBI and the trial court. In the 2014 murder of two girls in UP’s Badaun district, the investigating officer A.G.L. Kaul relied on polygraph tests to not charge some of the suspects. In the Aarushi–Hemraj case, the tests were all dismissed as unreliable.