Bharti Mandal Case Study

Bharti Mandal clearly admitted in the trial court that she had been coached. The honourable judge justifies this coaching, explaining in the judgment that there is nothing wrong in tutoring witnesses who are from a lower class and uneducated. I disagree with this fundamentally, their social standing and perceived intelligence according to the judge is not what makes them credible witnesses or not.

Why was the case directed against Talwars while the evidence pointed elsewhere? Chief among these facts are: the CBI actually failed to notice that there was direct forensic evidence against another suspect as early as November 2008. The Talwars brought this fact to light when they were given access to these forensic reports, but when they did, the CBI claimed there was a typographical error in the report. There was also immense media pressure to close the case, but the CBI, having been unable to frame charges within the stipulated period had let three other suspects go. The whereabouts of these suspects wasn't clear. Yet the case had to be 'closed'. The Talwars were the only ones within reach, being easy targets.
Here are the facts: the CBI never seized a scalpel from the Talwars, neither did investigators procure one to match the wounds to the weapon. The question of a forensic examination of the scalpel, therefore never arose. As far as the golf clubs went, the CBI first claimed that one had less dirt than the others, implying it had been cleaned, and therefore the murder weapon. In the trial court, however, the agency chose a different club as the weapon of offence--one that was no cleaner or dirtier than 10 others in the set. Also, the golf kit as a whole was a compromised piece of forensic evidence. It was established in court that the seals labs had put on it after examination were broken without any sanctions--it was a case of brazen and demonstrated