But there was no mistaking the sense of quiet vindication at the agency's headquarters over the development in the Ghaziabad court. The decision to file the closure report was, if bold, a risky one. For one, it marked a reversal of the agency's initial determination that the double killings were the handiwork of servants. For another, it came with the frank acknowledgement that it had failed to gather enough evidence to prosecute the Talwarsdespite its finding that they were the chief suspects in the case.
Government agencies, hamstrung by institutional vanity, are not known for owning up to mistakes. Officers say it was a bold decision to file a closure report in such a high-profile case when the easiest thing for the agency would have been to keep it hanging like so many others.
Sources said the CBI's new boss did not want to drag the case by pretending that the agency was hopeful of finding "clinching evidence" when none was in sight. CBI was not deterred by the media savvy Talwars either.
The agency says it has given all its findings in the closure report and is not going to push either for the Talwars' arrest or prosecution of people like Rajesh Talwar's brother Dinesh and former policeman K K Gautam even though the report talks in detail about their role in destruction of evidence which is one of the charges against the Talwars.
"Why should we arrest the Talwars? Whatever interrogation we had to do is done and we have given the findings in the report. Whether they should be arrested is now the court's call. As for others who were party to destruction of evidence, that is also on the court," an officer said.
On Dinesh Talwar, the closure report says that just before the postmortem, he had got the doctor doing it to talk to somebody on the phone saying that it was Dr Dogra, head of forensics of AIIMS. Dr Dogra denied this conversation later and CBI holds that this was a "clear attempt" to influence the doctor doing the postmortem.
"Dr Sushil Choudhary had contacted Shri K K Gautam on May 16, 2008, and had told him about the murder of Aarushi. At that time, he conveyed the request of Dr Dinesh Talwar that rape should not be mentioned in the postmortem report," the report says.
Though Talwars' counsel Rebecca John has been hammering away about the flip-flops in the CBI investigation where one team held servants Rajkumar, Krishna and Vijay Mandal guilty and the other termed the parents as suspect because of circumstantial evidence, CBI officers say it was a matter of investigation and what was given out changed as new findings came to light. As for the 90-page protest petition filed by the Talwars, "We will answer it if we are asked to by the court," an officer said.
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