The 14-year-old only daughter of dentists Rajesh and Nupur Talwar was found dead at home in May 2008 with her throat slit and a fatal head injury.
Suspicion initially fell on Hemraj until his bludgeoned body was found on the Talwars’ roof just one day later.
They denied murder, destroying evidence and misleading investigators in a sensational case that gripped India.
The couple burst into tears when judge Shyam Lal read out the verdict in a crowded court room in the city of Ghaziabad, just outside the capital, Delhi.
They issued a statement expressing their anguish at the verdict. Sentencing is to take place on Tuesday and the couple could face a life sentence or even the death penalty. Their lawyers say they will appeal.
“We are deeply disappointed, hurt and anguished for being convicted for a crime that we have not committed. We refuse to feel defeated and will continue to fight for justice,” the Talwars said in a written statement given to reporters.
The murders generated huge interest in India with every twist and turn in the case receiving wall-to-wall coverage.
The police investigation was the subject of intense scrutiny, with the Talwars and some legal experts saying that local detectives and then federal investigators from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) mishandled the case.
‘Compromising situation?’
Aarushi’s body was found in her own bedroom, just next door to her parents’ room at their home in the affluent Delhi suburb of Noida.
Prosecutors alleged that the Talwars killed their daughter in a rage when they found her in a compromising situation with Hemraj.
In the early days of the police investigation, Aarushi was described as a girl of “loose moral character” who chatted with boys and went for “sleepovers” at friends’ homes.
Such statements prompted an outcry from women’s and child rights groups.
Some experts say the case highlighted a “clash of cultures” within India, pitting police and conservative sectors of society against what they saw as the “excesses of the upper middle class”.
Nevertheless, the case enthralled India, receiving almost unprecedented levels of media scrutiny. In 2011 one man, with no connection to the case, attacked Rajesh Talwar with a meat cleaver as he went to court, leaving his face scarred.
But police in Noida – which lies in Uttar Pradesh state – who initially investigated the case were also severely criticised for their “shoddy” investigation.
Within hours of the crime, dozens of people, including television camera crews and reporters, had been in and out of the house compromising the scene of the crime, as reported in BBC.
Suspicion fell on several other suspects before investigators finally closed in on the parents and their trial began in June last year.
Catat Ulasan