“Some sections of the media have been concocting their own theories,” she said. “We were very much home on the night our daughter died.”

The newspaper Mail Today and television channels Zee News and India TV had, on Saturday, quoted “CBI sources” saying the couple had booked rooms in a south Delhi hotel on May 15 night.

CBI, too, clarified today that the news items were “not true” (see box).

Talwars’ lawyer Mrinal Mandal said they have already begun the process of legally challenging versions that appeared in the newspaper and news channels. Mandal told Newsline that the defence team has never heard a theory “as factually incorrect as this in the past 50 days”.

Satish Tamta, a senior lawyer defending the Talwars, said, “The story is factually incorrect; we would want to know which sources of the CBI spoke like this. We will initiate legal action against them.”

Nupur Talwar visited the CBI headquarters on Lodhi Road today to complain about the “concocted stories” and reportedly asked for action against such reports. While coming out of the headquarters, she said, “We saw a report on July 5 on a TV channel (that) claimed CBI sources have revealed that my husband and I were not in the house on May 15. Other channels and some section of print media also picked up this scurrilous story. The statements are completely and absolutely false.”

Police say: not true
While the agency denied having found any evidence to prove the couple had gone out late May 15 night, a Noida police officer who was part of the initial investigating team said on conditions of anonymity: “The family had not revealed any such thing in interrogations (police handled the case till June 1, when it went to CBI). The sequence of events we had built after days of interrogations and investigations do not point to any such possibility.”

The case diary prepared by police — Newsline has a copy — says the family had “claimed to have gone to sleep in the house that night”. The court had referred to the police’s case diary while denying bail to Rajesh Talwar.

The officer said, “The family could have said they had gone out that night had there been a possibility of saving Rajesh Talwar being charged with the murders. The focus of investigations would then have shifted from the family to others.”

Hotels say: no record
Newsline, meanwhile, found no entries in most south Delhi hotels it visited — the news reports said the couple had booked 15 to 20 rooms in one plush south Delhi hotel that night. While employees at some hotels gave out details on condition of anonymity, others denied access to the data. But not one had any registration in the name of Talwars, and not one showed a registration of more than five rooms by a single group.

According to probe officials, the couple had earlier said that on May 15 Nupur Talwar had gone off to sleep around 11.30 pm; Rajesh Talwar had been on the phone till at least midnight.

“The postmortem report has established the time of deaths between 1 am and 2 am,” the police officer said. “Rajesh Talwar, therefore, could not have consumed whisky, changed, and left the house before 1 am if he was on the phone till midnight.”

CBI denies
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Monday stated its team investigating the Noida double murder has “not comes across anything to show that Dr Rajesh Talwar and Nupur Talwar were not present in the house and were partying on the night of the murders”. A release issued by the agency today said news items about the dentist couple not being present at home, and a dozen rooms booked in a hotel were “not true”, and were “speculative”. The agency also stated that none of its officials has given such information to any mediaperson and called quoting “CBI sources” wrong since they did not confirm any such fact.

PROBE STATUS
Though questioning Vijay Mandal for the past few days, the CBI investigators have not been able to recover the murder weapon and other circumstantial evidence. The investigators are also waiting for the reports to come from the Hyderabad laboratory. A CBI team today visited Anita Durani’s house and questioned her for 15 minutes.