‘I immediately noticed splashes of blood on the wall behind her…’

Aarushi Talwar’s mother Nupur Talwar has come out with her version of what happened on May 15 in an interview to a news channel.

"We chatted and Aarushi kept planning for her birthday, calling up friends to confirm who, was coming, who was not. Usual day. Dr Talwar came home around 9:30 or 9:45 (pm). We had dinner and then we had a gift for her, which we gave her and that’s it. Having worked hard the whole day, we were tired. Aarushi lay down in her bed with her book. We went to our room, watching TV for a while and things like that and then went off to sleep. Just a normal day…," she told CNN-IBN.

"He (Hemraj) was the one who would open the door to the lady (maid Bharati), who comes in the morning. And since she rang the bell twice, I woke up and went. Then I realised he (Hemraj) was not there and we were locked inside and I panicked.

Then Dr Talwar panicked and said, 'Go check on Aarushi, let's go check on Aarushi.' We barged into her room together…we just entered the room and there she was, a blanket over her head, there was some kind of a bag lying on her head and I immediately noticed splashes of blood on the wall behind her…,” she told the channel.

"I didn't call the police immediately. I just called my brother-in-law, I called my parents, who live close by and I called Dr Durani, who’s a close family friend and our doctor. I think the maid immediately informed the neighbours, who are downstairs...the maid had also entered the room at the same time and was just behind us. She called our neighbours. That’s all I remember of that morning," she maintained. Nupur’s claim that her husband and she entered Aarushi’s room with their maid Bharati in tow contradicts Bharati’s version given to television channels that she found the Talwars crying in the drawing room when she reached the house that morning.

On why the couple didn’t hear anything that night, she said: "The thing is that we have adjacent rooms. We had both the air conditioners on which are pretty much noisy. We had the fans on. And probably we were fast asleep. We work like crazy people the entire day and there are times when you sleep like a log. I don’t know. What I got to know of the post-mortem report was that it probably did not take very long to do it (murder). Probably nothing was said. She did not even get to know it was done."

The police reacted sharply to Nupur’s statements that her husband was the softest target and that they arrested him under pressure from the top and the media. The police issued a statement, saying Rajesh Talwar was healthy and in their custody.

"Nupur Talwar and the family’s lawyer’s statement on TV about Dr Rajesh are baseless. We have to complete our investigations and we are doing it. Media cannot be the deciding factor and should not be the tool in a case of this nature," the police reacted.