The Allahabad high court’s belated (as usual) ‘not guilty’ verdict in the Aarushi murder case of 2008 seems to have been taken as a personal setback by popular television news anchor Arnab Goswami. For those who have been living under a rock, 14-year-old Aarushi was murdered in her Noida home nine years ago, and her parents Dr. Rajesh Talwar and his wife Nupur were convicted of the heinous crime when a sessions court judge bought the CBI’s argument that they had done it in a fit of rage after finding her in a sexually compromising position with their cook Hemraj. 

Now in new vestments as anchor of the recently launched Republic channel (in which he reportedly owns a majority equity share), Goswami is back to beating the same drum. There were only four people in the Talwars’ home the night of the murder because there was no sign of forced entry. Moreover, the murdered girl’s bed was neat and tidy and the crime scene was carefully cleaned. Who else but the parents would have done that? asked Goswami in his prime time news telecast on the night of the Talwars’ acquittal.

But as suggested in director Meghna Gulzar’s reconstruction of this episode in her film Talvar (2015), there was no sign of a break-in at the Talwars’ residence because Hemraj had let in some friends working as servants in the neighbourhood for a round of drinks after which they made a rape attempt on Aarushi. When Hemraj objected, he was killed by them and when Aarushi resisted she was also killed. The crime scene was cleaned to mislead the parents into thinking she was asleep and to allow the neighbours’ servants to make a getaway.

At the time when this theory was advanced on Goswami’s Times Now newscast by some police officers, they were shouted down for going after the usual suspects, i.e the poor, by Goswami (annual remuneration: Rs.12 crore at the time). Subsequently, the utterly inept Noida police dropped this line of investigation. Now notwithstanding the well-considered judgement of the Allahabad high court, Goswami is back to singing the same tune. The poor, my dear sir, are not always blameless.