Why the Aarushi Talwar case was the end of middle class innocence

Two people were murdered on the night of May 15, 2008 in the Noida suburb of India’s national capital. But let’s face it, we the middle class, were always more agitated by the killing of 14-year old Aarushi Talwar than by the killing of 45-year old Hemraj Banjade. After all death (even if it’s murder) would be par for the course in the poverty-stricken Nepalese village that Hemraj, the servant, called home. But brutal murders like Aarushi’s just didn’t happen in middle class homes in the national capital region. 

Even in the rare occasions they did, the perpetrators came from the underclass (domestic helps, street dwellers, Nepalese immigrants).Educated middle class professionals, by definition, could not be murderers. Rajesh Talwar in court: AFP Five years on, as dentists Rajesh and Nupur Talwar are sentenced to life in prison for the murder of their daughter and domestic help, some of us are outraged by the ‘shoddy’ investigations of the Noida police and CBI and the judgment of a Sessions Court. Or are we merely in denial that people like us can do evil things? Let’s be honest, this case has agitated us from the start, at least from the moment UP Inspector General of Police Gurdarshan Singh suggested in a press conference on May 24, 2008, that the Talwars may have killed their daughter.

 His statement drove a dagger through the heart of the middle class. It was the end of innocence for India’s most prosperous, vocal and influential citizens. By 2008 – 17 years after liberalization– India’s middle class had swelled in its ranks and in its level of prosperity. A majority of us were self-made professionals (some self-employed entrepreneurs) who had broken the shackles of old India. We were the new elite, distinct from the politico-bureaucratic-crony capitalist elite of the pre-liberalisation years. Characterised by immense self-confidence and an edgy impatience, we the new middle class were eager to change India, for the better. And we, the relatively flawless (compared to the corrupt old elite and the undereducated underclass) would deliver India from its perennial under-achiever status. The Talwars showed us a mirror to ourselves and to our flaws. 

The Aarushi-Hemraj murder case (over the last five and half years) was as much an ongoing police investigation as a continuous introspection by the middle class. We were divided in our views, but that did not stop us from expressing our opinions loudly. Of course, some of us believed that the Talwars could never have killed their daughter, not even in an accident that followed a fit of rage. Some of us believed that the Talwars did it and that they should receive exemplary punishment; be made an example of so that the middle class never again has to go through the trauma. (Note how we rarely have such strong views (either way) on the several other murder cases that are pending in courts and where police investigations can be equally suspect.) The fact is that our deep involvement in the case – let’s not blame the media alone – meant that that this would be a case like no other. It would have been so much easier for us, on either side of the opinion divide, had the police and CBI pinned the blame on Dr. Talwar’s compounder and other domestic helps.

 But the evidence, such as it was, did not nail them, just as it did not exonerate the Talwars. What we the middle class believe, is that the truth is irrelevant in the process of law. The police had enough reasons to make the Talwars suspects in the investigation. And the Sessions Court found enough evidence to convict. Another, higher, court will no doubt reexamine the evidence. The best hope for the Talwars is that a higher court will find ‘technical’ flaws with the investigation and thus strike down the conviction. That will still not answer the moot question: who killed Aarushi? We may never know. But whoever did it murdered our innocence.

Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/india/why-the-aarushi-talwar-case-was-the-end-of-middle-class-innocence-1252385.html?utm_source=ref_article