CBI official sent back to state cadre for Arushi case bungle

Senior IPS officer Arun Kumar, deputed to the CBI, has been sent back to his state cadre Uttar Pradesh following his poor handling of the sensational Arushi murder case.

The decision followed the startling revelation about the surreptitious replacement of Arushi Talwar’s vaginal swab that was taken during the course of the post-mortem, a senior police official said.

CBI director Ashwini Kumar, who was initially all praise about Arun Kumar, posted as a deputy inspector general in the agency found the lapse embarrassing. Arushi was found murdered in her Noida home May 15, 2008. Their domestic help Hemraj, initially suspected of the crime, was later found dead on the roof-top. The then Meerut zone inspector general Gurdarshan Singh accused Arushi’s father Rajesh of the murders.

Talwar’s arrest evoked much hue and cry, after which the case was transferred to CBI with Arun Kumar in command. The swab samples had been handed to the CBI, which sent it to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad in December 2008. However, the centre found the sample was not of Arushi.

While Kumar gave a clean chit to the Talwars and accused three servants, he allegedly took no action about the replacement of Arushi’s vaginal swab sample, neither finding out who was behind destroying vital evidence nor registering a case for destruction of evidence.