‘Active net router doesn’t mean they were awake’

Allahabad: The Allahabad high court, which acquitted the dentist Talwar couple on charges of murdering their daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj in 2008, has also rejected the CBI’s submission before the trial court that Dr Rajesh and his wife Nupur were awake on the intervening night of May 15 and 16 as the internet router in their flat was switched on during that period.

The CBI in its charge-sheet before the Ghaziabad trial court had produced internet consumption log and internet service provider (ISP) log of the internet router installed at Talwar’s L-32 flat in Jalvayu Vihar, Noida.

While also adding a testimony of one Bhupinder Singh Awasiya, scientist with the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) under ministry of communication in 2010, the Central agency had claimed that the Talwar couple manually switched on and off the internet router and therefore were awake between 11:30 pm and 6 am between May 15 and May 16.

While punching holes in the CBI theory, the HC said that the “same internet activity had continued through the May 16 morning up to 1:16 pm which was virtually of the same pattern (as that on 14th and 15th or before)”. “The trial court in our opinion committed a patent error of law and fact as well as evidence in holding that the appellants were awake throughout the fateful night,” the high court judge bench has said.

“After having carefully exami- ned the submissions by learned counsel for the parties,…we do not find any force in the submission of the learned counsel for the CBI because the internet activity during the intervening night of 15/ 16...that the accused had remained awake throughout the night...and had manually switched on and off the modem of the computer which was installed in the room of Aarushi as on each new start and stop,” the bench wrote in the order.

The high court said that the CERT scientist has admitted that he was never supplied with the desktop or laptop log, the router log and the detailed ISP log by the CBI, without which he was not in a position to give in an opinion as to whether the Internet activity was on account of the reasons that Talwar couple was awake.

The HC has also found the the scientist cited eight reasons for the start and stop activity, which were not investigated by him. Awasiya had told the CBI trial court that no necessary documents were sent by the CBI during the course of investigation. The eight reasons were router/modem power recycling, inactivity of router/modem which is switched on (which is also called as idle time out), lease time expiry of IP address assigned by ISP, network issues due to admin reset idle time out and login time out.

None of those reasons had ever been investigated by him because no necessary documents were ever sent by the CBI during the course of investigation.