Parents on trial over teen murder that gripped India

INDIA: A murder case that has obsessed India for four years will come to court on Friday when a middle-class couple from Delhi stand trial on charges of killing their teenage daughter and domestic servant.

At first police blamed the servant for murdering Aarushi Talwar, 13, but now her parents are accused of stabbing them both to death in a case awash with sexual rumour, as well as charges of police incompetence and a media witchhunt.

Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, who are successful dentists, have always denied killing their daughter and Nepalese employee Hemraj Banjade in the capital's suburb of Noida in May 2008.

The murders have raised awkward questions about the relationship between newly-wealthy Indian families and the poor, often-migrant servants who cook, clean and look after their every need at home.

When Aarushi was found with her throat slit, police immediately said Hemraj had murdered her -- triggering a media firestorm that tapped into fears within many Indian households about untrustworthy domestic staff.

But almost two days after Aarushi was killed, officers found Hemraj's body lying in the hot sun on the roof terrace of the house after he was apparently murdered at the same time as Aarushi.

The discovery kicked off fevered speculation about whether her parents had killed the two after discovering their daughter was in a relationship with the servant, or that they were killed to hide the parents' alleged affairs.

"Our stand was that the probe of the investigating officer proves that no outsider was involved in this," Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) counsel R.K. Saini told reporters after the decision to prosecute for murder.

"Circumstantial evidence is pointing out that whatever has been done, the parents only have done it," he said. AFP