Ghaziabad: Noted dentist couple Rajesh and Nupur Talwar were today convicted in the sensational double murder of their 14-year-old daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj, more than five years after the crime whose probe saw many twists and turns and flip flops by the prosecution. After a 15-month trial, Additional Sessions Judge Shyam Lal held both of them also guilty of destruction of evidence in the murder on the intervening night of May 15 and 16, 2008, days before the birthday of the class nine student in their residence in Noida. The father was also convicted under section 203 of IPC for filing wrong information with the Noida police station about the incident.

Arguments on sentencing will be held tomorrow after which the judge will announce quantum of sentence. The punishment for the couple could go upto a maximum of life term in jail. Death for murder is given in rarest of rare cases. "Now is the time to say omega in this case, to perorate it is proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused or the perpetrators of the crime in question. The parents are the best protectors of their own children. That is the order of the human nature but there have been freaks in the history of mankind where the father and the mother became the killer of their own progeny. They (Talwars) have extirpated their own daughter who hardly had seen 14 summers of her life and the servant without the compunction of terrestrial terrain in the breach of commandment 'thou shall not kill' and injunction of Holy Quran 'take not life which god has made sacred'," the judge said in his 204-page verdict. Dinesh Talwar, brother of Rajesh, told reporters outside the court that they would appeal against the verdict in the Allahabad High Court.