In the latest twist in a high-profile murder trial in India, prosecutors say a Delhi couple accused of killing their daughter and cook should not be given access to test results that may have shown the involvement of three other men. Nor, prosecutors argued, should they be allowed to call witnesses in their defence.

Aarushi Talwar murder: The inside story of India’s most controversial trial

The dozen or so witnesses the defence sought to call were “irrelevant,” R.K. Saini told a district court Thursday. Any attempt to call other witnesses was a delaying tactic and should also be rejected, he said, and the request for scientific records was a waste of the court’s time.

India’s central investigative agency, the CBI, accuses Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, both dentists, of coming across their only child, 13-year-old Aarushi and 45-year-old live-in male cook, Hemraj Banjade, in her bedroom and killing them in a fit of rage five years ago.

The lead investigator testified that Rajesh hit Hemraj on the head with a golf club and accidentally killed his daughter. Nupur and he then dragged Hemraj’s body to the roof terrace and slit his throat with a “surgical” instrument, A.G.L. Kaul said. The couple came back downstairs, slit their daughter’s throat, and wiped out all evidence.

“Every day gets more difficult,” the child’s mother, Nupur, tells me. She is my cousin — our mothers are sisters — and in January, I wrote at length about the murders at www.thestar.com/aarushi.

Prosecutors took one year to make their case, calling 39 witnesses.

A doctor who conducted the post-mortem on Hemraj told court that the dead man’s erect penis was evidence that sexual activity was either about to take place or was taking place. This knowledge, said the doctor, did not come from any scientific authority, but was based on his experience as a married man.

The golf club, as the prosecution admitted, has no blood or body fluid linking it to the murder. But one club was said to have less dirt on it than others in the bag; the CBI alleges that is sign of a “cleanup.”

The “surgical instrument” that investigators had previously identified as a dental scalpel was not presented.

The absence of Hemraj’s blood in Aarushi’s room was also a sign of a cleanup by the Talwars, prosecutors alleged.

The CBI had originally drawn up a list of 141 witnesses.

The testimony of 14 of those dropped is crucial for defence.

Among them:

A doctor who examined Aarushi’s vaginal swab and told police there was no sign of semen;

A constable who stated in police records she allowed cleaners to clean the crime scene hours after Aarushi’s body was discovered;

A high-ranking police official, Arun Kumar, who, during his stint at the CBI, headed a team that conducted extensive investigations and exonerated Rajesh in July 2008. His team found no evidence that Hemraj had been killed in the house. Hemraj’s blood was not in Aarushi’s room or on the Talwars’ clothes.

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Kumar’s team emerged with an alternative narrative of a sexual assault gone wrong and pointed the finger at the Talwars’ dental clinic assistant Krishna Thadarai, and two other domestic workers from the neighbourhood.

Kumar was taken off the case. A second CBI team did not investigate the three alternative suspects further; instead, it accused the Talwars of the murders.

The Talwars are seeking reports of the tests on the dental clinic assistant and the other two men.

They are also asking that evidence collected by police, including a blood-stained palm print on a stucco wall, blood on an alcohol bottle and a blood-stained pillow cover and blood-stained knife seized from Krishna’s house be examined by a DNA expert in England.

The trial continues.

How the Indian court system works:

The Indian Constitution, framed on Jan. 26, 1950, is heavily influenced by British, American, Irish and French laws. The Indian legal system, like Canada’s, is based on the British common law, with one crucial difference. There is no jury. Juries were abolished in 1960 for fear they could be influenced by the media and misled. Today, judges alone hear the cases, make the verdicts and decide the sentences.

The criminal code is called Indian Penal Code. A murder conviction gets life imprisonment or the death penalty, a punishment rarely carried out.

Most cases first go to district court, with appeals going to the High Court and then the Supreme Court. Special CBI courts — on par with district courts — hear cases from the Central Bureau of Investigation. Transcripts are rigorously kept at the Supreme Court, but are not a record of every word uttered in the lowest courts. Court reporters often write only what the judges ask them to.

Trials can stretch for years, with frequent gaps between hearings. Urgent cases can be held on a “fast-track” basis, which might mean most working days or just twice a week.

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