It was 3 a.m. on Thursday, when I woke up, too nervous to go back to sleep. On the other side of the world, millions of people shared my anticipation, awaiting an Indian High Court judgment of an appeal by two people convicted for murder.A little before 6 a.m., my phone began buzzing like a string of firecrackers on silent mode. When I finally dared to pick it up, I scanned the notifications for one nugget of information: convictions overturned.Oh sweet relief. Vindication. Now was the time to let the tears flow, but they`ve stubbornly held back so far, damn them.Four years ago, when I was a digital editor at the Star, I had shared a story of the pain and betrayal that followed the sensational 2008 murder of Aarushi Talwar and the live–in cook Hemraj Banjade in India. Aarushi’s parents – Nupur and Rajesh Talwar – were eventually convicted in 2013, when the judge called them, “freaks in the history of mankind.”Nupur is my cousin — our mothers are sisters. In Indian relationships, a cousin is like a sibling, which made her daughter my niece.The whole story had begun with what should have been a pretty straightforward case of murder. There were two crime scenes that were rich with evidence including a bloodied shoe print, a bloodied handprint on a wall, and 22 fingerprints. However, the continuous bungling by various investigators — none of those prints were identified, for instance — created not just twists and turns but explosive craters in a case that held a nation in thrall as the media breathlessly chased every morsel of gossip, innuendo and information.The scandalous narrative spun by the police in the early days was the one that stuck until the end: A pretty 13-year-old was doing something “objectionable, though not compromising” with the 45-year-old cook, an enraged father approached stealthily with a golf club that accidently hit the girl, he killed the cook, then finished off the job by sla ...
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