Aarushi Talwar murder trial: Nupur, Rajesh may have been acquitted sooner but for flawed Ghaziabad court judgment

The Allahabad High Court on Thursday announced the acquittal of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar — given benefit of doubt — in the case of their daughter Aarushi's murder. The judge ruled that there was only circumstantial evidence against the Talwars.However, it's possible the case may not have dragged on this long had things been done differently in the case four years ago.Describing the November 2013 judgment by a Ghaziabad court that held Rajesh and Nupur guilty of killing Aarushi and the domestic help Hemraj as 210-pages long "much of (which) was cut and pasted off other judgments", journalist Avirook Sen writes in his book Aarushi that the judgment had already been written long before the Talwar's defence counsel Tanveer Ahmed Mir had completed his final arguments."At each hearing Judge Shyam Lal would urge Mir to do two things: wrap up quickly and submit the written arguments. As Mir soldiered on, neither he nor the Talwars would have known the fruitlessness of their exercise. Ashutosh (the judge's son, who helped him write the judgment) was right, the guilty verdict was already being worked on. Shyam Lal after a brief while mumbled: ‘No, no . . . about a fortnight, not a month.’ But by then, his son had given too many details away: his trip to Ghaziabad, that he typed out the first ten pages himself as they tried to make special arrangements for a typist, the requirement for ‘good words’ which took time."Shyam Lal pronounced his judgment on 25 November 2013, however, as Sen's book points out, "As Judge Shyam Lal and his son sat down to write the judgement, Mir had not even begun (making his points)" and their arguments would only be submitted by 10 November.It's possible that the case could have arrived at its conclusion had the judgment been drafted a bit more judiciously. But now, we'll never know.