Days after the Crime Branch claimed to have recovered Arushi Talwar’s cellphone, and inadvertently punched a hole through the CBI’s claims that it was destroyed by key suspect Rajkumar, his lawyer today said the agency’s confessional statement from Rajkumar now falls flat if the phone turns out to be Arushi’s.

The CBI had got 14-day custody of Rajkumar, then employed as help in the Talwars’ family friends Durranis’ household, from the special CBI court last June by citing his confessional statement.

The case diary submitted in court by the CBI said, “The accused under (Section) 161 CrPC Act confessed that he had switched off Arushi’s mobile and then destroyed it. He had hidden the destroyed phone in a secret place and can help us recover it along with Hemraj’s mobile and the weapon of murder.”

But Rajkumar’s lawyer Naresh Yadav pointed out that far from being “destroyed”, as claimed by CBI, the phone recovered is intact — only the memory card and data is lost — and that questions the credibility of the confessional statement. “As per CBI’s case diary, Rajkumar confessed having destroyed Arushi’s phone. If confessional statement was authentic, then only Rajkumar would know the ‘secret place’ where he hid it,” Yadav said.

Yadav contends that if the recovered phone belonged to Arushi then Rajkumar never destroyed it.

Meanwhile, the CBI on Wednesday released Ram Bhool, who was using Arushi’s cellphone for the past few months, his sister Kusum and her husband Vyas after interrogating them for two days. The three were also put under lie-detection tests on Tuesday.

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