title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The body was lying on the left of the roof entrance near the external unit of the air conditioner (AC), and was covered by a panel from the roof cooler. The body appeared to have been dragged towards to AC unit, as the quantity of blood was more near the AC unit. An expert from Gandhinagar as well as a team of experts from CFSL concluded that the drag mark on the roof resulted from a blood-soaked body being dragged after being kept in a bed sheet. This raised suspicion that Hemraj might have been killed somewhere else, and his body dragged to the terrace in order to hide it. However, in June 2008, CBI's UV Light testing team reported that it didn't find Hemraj's bloodstains anywhere except the terrace. So, unless the killer cleaned up the original murder spot, Hemraj seems to have been killed on the terrace. The blood found on the staircase leading to the terrace on 17 May might have come from the mattress that the cleaners were trying to dump on the terrace.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: A double-bed cover was draped upon the iron grill that separated the Talwars' terrace from the neighbouring terrace. The investigators found a smudged blood-stained palm print on the terrace wall. The blood was later identified as that of Hemraj, but the print could not be identified. The police also photographed a blood-stained shoe print on the terrace; the shoe size was 8 or 9.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: According to the Talwars' lawyer Pinaki Mishra, those who had found Hemraj's body saw hair in his mouth, possibly that of his killer. However, the police did not check this.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Unlike Aarushi's body, which had undigested food in the stomach, Hemraj had just 25 ml of liquid in his stomach, indicating that he did not have dinner. This evidence was also supported by the fact that his dinner was found untouched in the kitchen on the morning of 16 May.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In 2012, during proceedings against Aarushi's parents as suspects, Dr. Naresh Raj told the court that Hemraj's penis was swollen when his body was brought for autopsy. According to him, this meant that he was either in middle of a sexual intercourse, or was about to have one. The defence lawyer cited a medical book which stated that this swelling of penis after death was normal. In response, the doctor stated that his conclusion was not based on any medical authority, but on experiences from his own married life.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 1 July 2008, the first CBI team recorded a statement by KK Gautam, describing Hemraj's room as he found it on 17 May. According to this statement, Gautam saw three glasses, two of which had some quantity of liquor in them, while the third one was empty. He also found three bottles: Kingfisher beer, a Sprite and Sula whisky. Later, DNA of Hemraj was found on the Kingfisher bottle, although according to CBI's investigators, he was a teetotaler.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Gautam also visited the servant's toilet where he "found urine of more than one person". According to the statement, he also saw a depression on Hemraj's mattress pointing to the presence of three people in his room. However, in 2012, Gautam told the court that there was no liquor in any of the glasses. He also stated that he had not suggested presence of three people in the room, based on the state of the mattress. When questioned about the discrepancies, he stated that the investigating officer should be asked why his statements were not recorded correctly. He stated that an officer from the first CBI team "distorted several things he said, added things he did not say, and produced a statement that suited the line of investigation at the time."


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, and the middle grill door had been found latched from the outside in the morning. There were two known sets of keys to the house entrance. One set was with the Talwars, and another with Hemraj. Nupur threw down one bunch of keys to the maid on the morning of 16 May. According to the CBI, Nupur had taken these keys from Hemraj's room. According to Nupur, Hemraj's keys would usually be kept on the sideboard, but she couldn't find them on that morning; so, she threw down her own keys to the maid. The question whether this key was that of Nupur or Hemraj was initially relevant to the investigation, as there were reports that the middle grill door had been locked from outside with a key (If both the keys were inside and CBI was right, it could mean that the parents locked the door, then went inside their apartment through Hemraj's door which they locked from inside, in order to mislead the investigators). However, later, the maid Bharati's testimony in the court established that the door was merely latched from outside. Thus, if the killers were not the parents, they could have shut the innermost wooden door (which automatically locked when shut), and then latched the middle grill door from outside.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: When the maid, Bharati, visited the house on the morning of 16 May, she tried to push the outermost gate but could not open it. When she came back at the gate after collecting the bunch of keys (which Nupur had thrown down), she could open it by pushing it. The CBI theorized that the gate was originally latched from inside: when Bharati went down to fetch the keys, Nupur came to the passage via Hemraj's room, and unlatched it. In September 2012, the defence claimed that the maid Bharati Mandal was a tutored witness, as she told the court "" ("I am saying whatever I was explained.") However, Bharati denied that she had given any incorrect statement under CBI's pressure. The defence stated that this door was not closed, and presented Rajesh's driver Umesh Sharma as a witness, who stated that this outermost door could be opened by pushing it hard.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The key to the terrace door was never found. According to the Talwars, this key was present in Hemraj's bunch of keys, which went missing after the murders.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The door to Aarushi's room (and the main door of the house) would lock automatically when shut. Aarushi's door could either be opened from inside, or from outside with a key. Usually, her room would be locked at the night, and its keys would be at Nupur's bedside. There was no sign of forced entry in Aarushi's room. On the morning of 16 May, the key was found in its shoe-shaped key ring, on top of a framed wall sculpture near the house entrance, in the living room. Nupur later told police that she was not sure whether she closed Aarushi's door the last time she entered the room at 11:00 pm, and if she did, she might have let the keys hanging in the key slot. She claims to have stated this in several lie detector, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests that she cleared. In 2013, the SP Mahesh Kumar Mishra told the court that, on 16 May 2008, Rajesh Talwar claimed that he had locked Aarushi's room from outside at 11:30 pm on the previous night. Rajesh also told him that he had forgotten to lock his own bedroom door from inside, and someone could have stolen the key to Aarushi's room from his room.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Hemraj used a Tata Indicom mobile with the electronic serial number #20CFA3EC. The SIM card was registered in name of Rajesh. On 15 May, Hemraj had received two calls from the Talwars' clinic: the first call at 4:58 pm lasted for 10 minutes, and the second call at 5:37 pm lasted for minutes. Rajesh was working in his Hauz Khas clinic at the time, while Nupur was in another area of Noida (Fortis Hospital), as indicated by her mobile phone records. The Talwars' defence lawyer later claimed that Krishna Thadarai was working in the Noida clinic at that time.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The last call made to Hemraj during his lifetime was at 8:27 pm, and it lasted for 6 minutes. The call had been made from a PCO in Sector 31; the PCO was located a kilometer away from the Talwars' apartment. The investigators were unable to determine who made this call.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The phone records confirmed that Nupur called Hemraj's phone from the Talwars' landline at 6.01 a.m. on 16 May. The call was picked up, but disconnected after two seconds. This call was the last received on the phone, which was somewhere in the coverage area of the Nithari village cell tower 1362/254. The cell tower had a radius of around 1 km, and covered the apartment complex in which the Talwars (and Thadarai) lived. The police therefore suspected that the killer was present inside the house or in its vicinity on the morning of 16 May.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Aarushi used a gloss black Nokia N72. She would usually chat with her friends on phone until past midnight. However, on the night of 15 May, her mobile phone was inactive after 9:10 pm. According to the investigators, some of her friends had tried to contact her, but found her mobile phone switched off. The police suspected that either the battery of Aarushi's mobile phone had died or it had been confiscated by this time.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Around midnight, Aarushi's friend Anmol tried calling Aarushi on her mobile and then on the family's landline, but there was no response. Anmol sent an SMS message to her mobile phone at around half-past-midnight. According to the phone records, this SMS was not received by Aarushi's phone.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: A few days after her death, Aarushi's phone was found on a dirt track by a housemaid named Kusum, near Noida's Sadarpur area. The phone was possessed by her brother Ram Bhool since May 2008, but he started using it only in February 2009, when he bought a new SIM card. He used it intermittently; on 12 September 2009, the police traced the phone to his residence in Bulandshahar, and recovered the phone from one Jitender whom he had just sold the phone to. Kusum and Ram Bhool were taken into custody for questioning, but the CBI determined that they had no role in the murders: they were not aware that the phone belonged to Aarushi, and had no mala fide intention in keeping it. The police did not find a data card, pictures or text messages on the recovered phone.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The family's landline phone was kept in the bedroom of Rajesh and Nupur Talwar. According to the investigators, Anmol called the landline phone around 11:30 pm, and the call lasted 34 seconds. However, Rajesh denied any knowledge about such a call. Anmol also dialed the family's landline number around midnight, after having failed to reach Aarushi on her mobile: there was no response. The Talwars say that Aarushi would sometimes turn off the ringer on the landline at night, and she might have done it on that night too.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The neighbour Puneesh Tandon later told the court that when he visited the Talwar residence on the morning of 16 May, he asked Nupur's father if he had called the police. Nupur's father told him that the landline was out-of-order.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Rajesh's mobile phone records do not indicate anything out of the ordinary. The tower location indicates that he was at his residence. He had exchanged 16 calls with his fellow practitioner Anita Durrani until 8 pm. At 9:50 pm, he called the Impressionzz traders in Mumbai, from whom he had ordered Aarushi's camera through Indiatimes shopping, probably to ask about a camera feature. At 10.04 pm, he received a call from the father of a patient, who had an appointment on the next day. At 10:06, he called Dr. Mridul Seth to consult on a surgery scheduled on the next day. At 10:15, he received a call from Vikas Sethi, an employee at his Hauz Khas clinic. At 10:38, he received a call from a UAE number. At 10:54 pm and 11:01 pm, he made calls to the American Academy of Implant Dentistry, Chicago. The next call from his mobile was at 6:19 am on the next day, after the discovery of Aarushi's body.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Nupur's mobile phone was switched off from 7:40 pm on 15 May to 1 pm on 18 May. The call records showed that it had not been switched off even once during 60 days preceding the murder.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: According to the police, Hemraj had told some of his friends about a threat to his life. Although Hemraj's son-in-law Jeevan denied any knowledge of such a threat, a social worker Usha Thakur confirmed that five days before his murder, Hemraj had told her that he feared for "his life and that of some of his near and dear ones". Later, she told the investigators that she could not do anything for him that day, since she had rush to Bangalore due to a family emergency.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Nearly three years after the murder, in March 2011, Hemraj's wife Khumkala, a resident of Nepal, came to India. She moved a plea at the CBI court in Ghaziabad, alleging that she suspected the Talwars to be the murderers. She stated that Hemraj treated Aarushi like his own daughter, but had strained relations with Rajesh. She claimed when Hemraj visited Nepal in December 2007, he had described Rajesh as a short-tempered person who rebuked him for trivial things and even chased him to beat him up. She also claimed that Hemraj had called her from a PCO 15 days before his murder: He told her that Rajesh and Nupur suspected him of leaking their family secrets. When Rajesh's brother Dinesh visited their house, he also looked upon Hemraj with suspicion. The three threatened to kill him, if he dared leak the family's private information to the outsiders. According to her, Hemraj was frustrated with the Talwars' behaviour and was searching for a new job. Hemraj's wife also claimed that Hemraj had not sent any money back home since December 2007, and had told her that he had kept the money with the Talwars. But the Talwars did not send her Hemraj's dues after his murder. When asked why she had not made these revelations earlier, she stated that she had faith in India's judiciary until that point; her lawyer stated that she came from a poor family and had little awareness.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The discovery of Hemraj's body had greatly embarrassed the police, as their initial investigation focused on him as the murderer. The police were also criticized for other investigation lapses, such as not cordoning off the crime scene. The investigating officer Dataram Nauneria (Noida Sector-20 police Station Officer) was shifted on 17 May. The next day, Superintendent of Police (City) Mahesh Mishra was also transferred.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 19 May the police named the Talwars' former Nepali domestic help Vishnu Sharma (alias Vishnu Thapa) as the suspect. Vishnu had worked as a servant and a clinic helper for the Talwars for 10 years. He would go on long vacations; each time, he would replace himself with a distant relative. When he left for a vacation 8 months before the murder, he introduced Hemraj to the Talwars as his replacement. However, when he returned, he found himself out of job: the Talwars preferred to retain Hemraj as a permanent employee. The police suspected that an angry Vishnu might have killed Hemraj for usurping his job; Aarushi might have been killed for being a witness. Vishnu was taken into custody, along with former servants of the Talwars. However, the police were unable to find any evidence that connected him to the murders. It was confirmed that he was in Nepal on the day of the murders.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 21 May, Delhi Police joined the UP police in the investigation. By this time, the police as well as the media had started suspecting the parents for multiple reasons:


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Accordingly, the police started investigating the parents as the suspects. On 22 May, Meerut inspector-general Gurdarshan Singh speculated about a scenario where Hemraj was the main target of the killing, but stated that no arrests will be made without evidence:


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 23 May, Rajesh and Nupur were taken to the Police Lines area, where they were split up. Nupur was put in a room with her cousin and a woman constable, while Rajesh was arrested and taken to a local magistrate. Subsequently, Rajesh was taken to the Dasna jail. Rajesh later claimed that the magistrate did not allow him to make any phone calls, and police threatened him into signing a confession on the way to the jail. He claimed that the police were talking whether they should kill him; when he refused to sign the confession, they abused and threatened him throughout the day. Since it was Friday, Rajesh could not apply for a bail until Monday. He spent the weekend in the jail. He later stated that the police threatened him to sign the confession again while he was in their custody.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On the same day, Gurdarshan Singh organized a press conference. He announced that Rajesh killed Aarushi and Hemraj to hide his extramarital affair with Anita Durrani. He claimed that Aarushi's friend Anmol stated that she had told him about her father's affair. (On 22 May, the police had questioned Anmol, who had 688 phone interactions with her in the 45 days preceding her murder.) Singh presented the following possible sequence of events, but did not mention any specific evidence:


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The police accused Nupur Talwar of helping cover up the crime. The prosecution later alleged that she deliberately called Hemraj's phone to make the investigators believe that the killer was elsewhere. In the last week of May 2008, the police claimed that they had a confession from Rajesh Talwar, but the Talwars denied this. Rajesh stated that one Dinesh Verma was framing him, but the investigators later stated that there was no person with this name working on the case.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The public opinion turned against the Talwars, and many of their friends started avoiding them. The Fortis Hospital fired Rajesh on the same day. However, the members of the Indian Dental Association and former patients professed their belief in Rajesh's innocence.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The police seized Rajesh Talwar's laptop, and the hard disk of Aarushi's computer on 25 May. A few days later, they claimed that Aarushi's e-mails to her father "justify her relations with three other boys", and that "objectionable" words were used in her interactions with her friends. The police released selective e-mails to indicate that Aarushi was not on good terms with her father. For example, one of the e-mails to her father read "I just wanted to try it out coz I heard from mah frndz ... so wotz da harm ... I wnt do it again n I kinda noe hw u r feelin." (This particular e-mail was actually a year old, and was Aarushi's apology for her insistence to go out for watching the movie "Namaste London" with her friends without an adult). In June, a report in the "Mid-Day" newspaper quoted an unnamed Delhi police official as saying that the Talwars were part of a wife swapping club, and they would lock Aarushi in her room whenever the club members met at the Talwar residence. It further claimed that Hemraj told Aarushi about this club, and called a number in Dubai, where the kingpin of this club was residing a night before the murder. On 6 July, an English daily Mail Today reported that the Talwars spent the night of the murders at a high-society party in a posh South Delhi hotel, quoting CBI sources. Both Nupur Talwar and CBI refuted the allegations.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Aarushi's friends and relatives were outraged at the character assassination of the family, especially at the suggestion that she was in a sexual relationship with Hemraj. The supporters of the Talwars say that the police and the media tried to malign Aarushi as a disturbed, promiscuous teenager. Aarushi had received a bouquet of flowers from an admirer, had done a school project on drug addiction, and had 688 interactions with her schoolmate Anmol in 45 days. All these were used to build a "portrait of promiscuity" according to the Talwars' supporters. Her schoolmates at the Delhi Public School organized a candlelight vigil condemning the police for maligning her name. Renuka Chowdhury, the Minister for Women and Child Development, demanded the suspension of Inspector-General Singh. Singh was transferred a month later, only to be transferred back two months later.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Rajesh claimed that he was being framed by the police to cover up their own botched-up investigation. The case was transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on 31 May at the request of Aarushi's parents. In June, CBI started investigating the case under the Joint-Director Arun Kumar IPS.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: According to the Talwars, the idea of Aarushi and Hemraj having a relationship and that of Rajesh's extra-marital affair was planted by Krishna Thadarai, an assistant at the Talwars' dental clinic. Rajesh stated that two days before the murders, he had reprimanded Thadarai for making an incorrect dental cast. This claim was supported by Anita Durrani. Rajesh's driver Umesh Sharma stated that he had heard Thadarai and Hemraj talking loudly in Nepali in the car. When he inquired, Thadarai told him that he would "deal with Rajesh". Hemraj's phone was present in the Jalvayu Vihar apartment complex on the morning of 16 May, and Thadarai (along with the Talwars) lived in the same area.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 7 June, Thadarai was detained on suspicion. The CBI team searched his house and found a pillow cover, along with a blood-stained kukri and trousers. He was subjected to polygraph test twice at Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Delhi. On 9 June, he appeared for a psychological assessment test at AIIMS, New Delhi. On 12 June, he was administered a polygraph test and Narco Analysis test at the Bowring Hospital, Bangalore under the supervision of an expert team from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), led by assistant director Dr. S Malini and anaesthetist Dr. Srikanta Murthy. He was arrested on 13 June. Meanwhile, lie detection tests conducted on Rajesh and Nupur Talwar both turned out to be inconclusive. A second set of tests did not find any evidence of deception on their part.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In his Narco test, Thadarai talked of a second murderer. Accordingly, the CBI also started investigating his friend Rajkumar, who was a domestic servant with the Durranis. During 23–26 June, Rajkumar was subjected to polygraph test, psychological assessment, brain mapping and narco analysis at FSL, Gandhinagar. The CBI seized washed T-shirts with faint human blood stains from his residence, and sent them for DNA matching. The Durranis, who were close friends of the Talwars, stated that the stains could be from the boils that Rajkumar had on his body. On 27 June, Rajkumar was arrested on suspicion.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 30 June 2008, Vijay Mandal (aka Shambhu), another friend of Thadarai, was reported as a suspect in the media. Mandal was a driver and domestic help for Talwars' neighbour Puneesh Tandon. Hemraj, Thadarai and Rajkumar were all of Nepali origin, and had been recruited through Vishnu, the ex-servant of the Talwars. On 9 July, Rajkumar was subjected to a second narco-analysis test at FSL Bangalore, and the next day, the media reported that he had confessed to the murders. Vijay Mandal, already being investigated, was also arrested on 11 July.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: According to a later petition by the Talwars, the Narco tests had revealed that the three suspects had watched a Nepali song on the TV in Hemraj's room on the night of the murders. This had been told to the journalist Nalini Singh by the CBI official Anuj Arya. Nalini Singh, the owner of the Nepalese channel on which the song was telecast, had been asked for the details of the songs telecast on her channel on the night of the murders. Anuj Arya told her that the information provided by her matched with the suspects' revelations.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: During a press-conference on 11 July 2008, Arun Kumar stated that the case was still unsolved. He stated that no evidence had been found against Rajesh Talwar, but also added that the CBI had not given him a "clean chit". He stated that Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal seemed to be the prime suspects, based on the narco tests, but the CBI had not found any corroborative evidence against them.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The three men had described different sequences of events during their narco tests. There were different versions even among the same person's test. For example, Thadarai provided three different versions regarding the murder weapon. CBI did not make the transcripts of narco tests available to the public, and there were conflicting media reports about the exact sequence of events, which was somewhat like this:


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Rajesh Talwar was released later in the day, for lack of evidence, after having spent 50 days in prison. Rajesh and Nupur relocated to their parents' home after his release. The three other suspects were arrested, but the drug-induced confession was not enough to charge them.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 9 August 2008, the CBI director Ashwani Kumar stated that the case remained unsolved, but also added that Rajesh Talwar should be exonerated. The three men were released in September, after the police could not find any hard evidence against them. Immediately after his release, Vijay Mandal alleged that the CBI had used physical force and threats against him, and at times, praised him to coax him into turning an approver against Thadarai and Rajkumar. He insisted that the charges against all three of them were false and an attempt to frame them. He also stated that he did not know Rajkumar at all, and that the CBI "trapped" him into saying something wrong when he was semi-conscious.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In January 2009, CBI announced that the agency was ready to file a chargesheet against Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal. However, in the absence of any hard evidence, this could not be done.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In September 2009, it was reported that Aarushi Talwar's vaginal swab sample had been tampered with. The sample had been collected by Dr. Sunil Dohre during her post-mortem, and sent to the Gautam Budh Nagar district hospital. The hospital's medico-legal register, which contained the information about Aarushi's sample, went missing in 2008. Pathologist Dr. Ritcha Saxena (the wife of Dr. Naresh Raj, who conducted Hemraj's post-mortem) performed the procedure of converting the swabs into slides and conducted the vaginal swab test. According to her, when the sample arrived at the hospital, it was collected by her lab technicians Vikas and Navneet.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Ritcha Saxena's tests established here that no semen was present in the sample. The slides were then kept into a steel almirah in the hospital's laboratory. On 1 June 2008, CBI contacted Ritcha over phone requesting access to the sample. Ritcha, who was in Patna at the time, guided the CBI team to her lab over the phone. According to her, the slide was handed over to the CBI by the Chief Medical Superintendent S C Singhal in her absence. Singhal and Ritcha had been involved in a dispute over her transfer: Ritcha had been transferred in 2008, but she neither took up her new post nor resigned. Singhal thus considered her as officially on leave at the time she prepared Aarushi's slides. Ritcha alleged that Singhal had deliberately taken all her registers away to mark her absent, although she regularly came to the hospital every day.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The CBI later sent the sample to their own CFSL lab in Delhi, where Dr. BK Mohapatra found it to be a mix of two vaginal samples, one of which was Aarushi's. The CBI then sent the sample for further testing to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) in Hyderabad. The CDFD stated that the sample largely contained DNA of a person other than Aarushi. Initially, the CBI considered the possibility of a conspiracy to destroy the evidence that Aarushi might have been sexually assaulted or had consensual intercourse prior to her death.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Dr. Ritcha Saxena was suspected of tampering with the samples. Her involvement came under scrutiny, because she personally knew Aarushi's mother Nupur Talwar. Ritcha denied that Nupur Talwar tried to influence the results of her tests in any way. She also stated that she knew Nupur only to some extent: her son had been treated by Nupur at the Fortis hospital several years before, and her daughter was Aarushi's junior at the Delhi Public School. She claimed that when she tested Aarushi's swab, she did not know that the subject was Nupur's daughter.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The Talwars were questioned about the tampering allegations during their lie-detector and brain-mapping tests, but were cleared. The CBI also questioned Ritcha, searched her labs and retrieved over a dozen vaginal swab slides. These slides were sent to Hyderabad for testing, but none matched the unidentified DNA traced in Aarushi's slide. The CBI ultimately concluded that the original sample was that of Aarushi, but it had become contaminated. It dismissed the entire episode as a genuine mistake and not a cover-up. In an unrelated development, Ritcha was later fired for absenteeism as she had not reported to her new post.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In July 2008, the Uttar Pradesh government had announced Arun Kumar's recall to the UP cadre. At that time, the UP government had clarified that the recall had no connection with the Aarushi case. Arun Kumar's tenure at CBI ended in September 2009. The media had accused him of not investigating the alleged tampering scandal, and speculated that this scandal had resulted in him being taken off the case.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In September 2009, the case was transferred to a new CBI team headed by SP Neelabh Kishore. Additional SP AGL Kaul served as the investigating officer.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Apart from the reasons that had made the parents the prime suspects earlier, the new CBI team came up with some additional points. The CBI questioned the doctors who had conducted the postmortem on Aarushi's body. Both Dr. Sunil Dohre and Dr. Naresh Raj made new statements (see the Evidence section above). Dr. Dohre stated that Aarushi's hymen was ruptured, and her private parts appeared to have been cleaned. Dr. Naresh Raj stated that Hemraj's swollen private part indicated the possibility of sexual intercourse. In October 2009, a crime-scene analysis was done for CBI based on the photographs of the scene. This analysis supported the conjecture that the crime scene had been dressed-up after the murders.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Dr. Sunil Dohre later told the court that before the autopsy began, Dinesh Talwar gave him a phone and asked him to talk to "Dr. Dogra". Dohre was under the impression that the person on the line was AIIMS Forensics head Dr. TD Dogra. The person asked him to take blood samples among other samples, and Dohre replied that he would do whatever he felt was required. Later, it was found out that the Dr. Dogra of AIIMS did not talk to Dohre. The CBI inferred that Dinesh was trying to influence the report, but the defence argued that asking someone to take blood samples cannot be considered as such an attempt.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The new CBI team identified the weapon used for the initial blow as a golf club because of the "triangular-shaped head injury". The CBI suspected that the weapon used to deliver the blow was one of Rajesh's golf clubs. Rajesh was an amateur and infrequent golf player. His neighbour Puneesh Tandon had given him a golf bag 8–9 years back. On 29 October 2009, after the Talwars had moved away from their Noida house, the CBI asked them to send Rajesh's golf set to them. Rajesh complied the next day, handing over the golf set consisting of 3 woods (No. 1, 3 and 5), 7 irons (No. 3-9) and a putter. The CBI later stated that the dimensions of the striking surface of the golf club bearing No. 5 were identical to the dimensions of the injuries on the heads of the victims. No blood, DNA or any other biological fluid could be recovered from the golf clubs. A CFSL expert stated that two particular golf clubs marked as Exhibit 3 (the 5-wood) and Exhibit 5 (the 4-iron) "appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned so much so that they were visibly distinct" from the other golf clubs. The CBI suggested that these clubs might have been cleaned to hide their use in the murders. According to Rajesh, the golf clubs bearing No. 4 and No. 5 were originally placed in his car. When the car was sent for servicing (before the murders), the driver Umesh Sharma placed them in Hemraj's room. This event was confirmed by Sharma. Rajesh also says that he never tried to hide these clubs: they were always in plain sight of the investigators, and when he had moved to Delhi, all his belongings, including the golf clubs, were packed under the supervision of a CBI inspector. However, the CBI stated that in the photographs of Hemraj's room, taken by CFSL on 1 June 2008, only one golf club is visible and the other is missing. Rajesh also stated that his friend Ajay Chadda and his wife Nupur had found a golf club in the loft of their residence, when the loft was being cleaned a year after the murders. However, they did not inform CBI for over a year. This information was confirmed by Chadda. The defence pointed out that this is irrelevant to the case: the golf set had two clubs numbered 5 - the iron found in the loft, and the one that the CBI suspected to be the murder weapon, which was a wood.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Nilabh Kishore questioned the Talwars at his Dehradun office on 18–19 May 2010. A few days later, on 24 May (Aarushi's birthday), a story in "The Pioneer" implied that Aarushi had been murdered by Rajesh in an honor killing, quoting unnamed sources in the CBI. On 21 July, Rajesh Talwar asked the court to pass a restraint order against the "unethical and misleading information" being published by the print media outlets. When the Court issued a show cause notice to "The Pioneer", Nilabh Kishore issued an affidavit on 4 October 2010 stating that "no authorised person in the CBI" had spoken to "The Pioneer" correspondent, and that the article was full of "factual infirmities and conjectures".


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 29 December 2010, CBI filed a closure report, naming Rajesh Talwar as the sole suspect. The report is summarized below:


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The CBI officer AGL Kaul later revealed that he wanted to file a chargesheet against the parents for the murders, but his superiors Nilabh Kishore and Javed Ahmed decided to file a closure report due to insufficient evidence. Arun Kumar of the first CBI team was consulted before filing the closure report, and he stated that there was no evidence that linked the Talwars to the murder. The Talwars' relatives and their supporters alleged that all the CBI officers investigating the case were colleagues of the state police who botched the original investigation.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Since the report named Rajesh Talwar as a suspect, the Talwars criticized CBI for making "false and baseless" allegations against them; Nupur lamented that the CBI had condemned them for life. On 24 January 2011, a 29-year-old self-proclaimed vigilante Utsav Sharma assaulted Rajesh Talwar with a meat cleaver in front of the court. Rajesh suffered deep cuts on his hands and the right side of his face. Sharma, who claimed to be upset at the slow pace of the case, had previously attacked former police chief S.P.S. Rathore of the Ruchika Girhotra Case. Nupur accused the CBI of "unleashing mob" on her family, and criticized the media commentary on the case.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 30 January 2011, people gathered at Jantar Mantar demanding justice for Aarushi. The protest was attended by activists including those from the Middle Finger Protests group who held banners that read, "CBI - Congress Bureau of Injustice" and "CBI - Congress Bureau of Investigation".


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In January 2011, the Talwars filed a petition protesting against the CBI's attempt to close the case. However, their petition was rejected by the magistrate Preeti Singh of the special CBI court in Ghaziabad. On 9 February 2011, she converted the CBI closure report into a charge sheet, and summoned Rajesh and Nupur as the accused. The Talwars moved the Allahabad High Court and then the Supreme Court, petitioning against being summoned and proceedings being initiated against them. However, both the courts rejected their pleas.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The formal trial began from 11 May 2013. CBI was represented by senior advocate Siddharth Luthra. The Talwars were defended by the former solicitor-general Harish Salve, Mukul Rohatgi and Rebecca Mammen John, all of whom worked pro bono. The defence lawyers focused on opposing the clean chit given to Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal; providing counter-arguments to the points that raised suspicions on their clients; and pointing out lapses in the investigation. The Talwars were given access to the witness statements and the photographs on which CBI was relying for prosecution. However, they were not given access to the polygraph, narco-analysis and brain-mapping test reports of Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal. The Talwars also objected to the CBI's claim that the narco tests on the three men were unreliable. They moved to the Supreme Court to seek these reports, but in October 2013, the Court rejected their plea on the grounds that such reports are inadmissible in evidence. The Court also stated that the Talwars were adopting delaying tactics, citing the several applications filed by them at every stage. The CBI court also rejected the Talwars' plea to summon Anuj Arya and Nalini Singh to prove that the three men were present in Hemraj's room on the night.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In August 2012, the media reported that the CBI officer AGL Kaul had been using the e-mail ID hemraj.jalvayuvihar@gmail.com for the CBI's official communication with the Talwars, under the name "Hemraj Singh". CBI initially denied these allegations, but later admitted that the email ID was created for some "specific purpose" which they refused to explain. The journalist Avirook Sen alleged that this was a crude pressure tactic against the Talwars, since they were forced to respond to the mails purportedly coming from someone named "Hemraj".


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The Talwars asked for a touch DNA test to analyze the palm print found on the terrace, and the Scotch whisky bottle. The Talwars also asked for a touch DNA test on the golf club that was allegedly used as the murder weapon. They even offered to pay for these tests. The CBI consulted J Nagaraju, a molecular genetics scientist (and director of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, which conducted the DNA testing for the Aarushi case). Nagaraju dismissed the reliability of the LCN DNA technology and the possibility of it yielding any fresh evidence. The Supreme Court rejected the Talwars' appeal, and refused to order any further investigation.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In August 2012, the CFSL DNA scientist BK Mahapatra claimed that he had found male DNA on Aarushi's pillow, leading credence to the theory that Hemraj was present in her room. However, the CBI later clarified that Mahapatra's claim was wrong. The pillow was from Hemraj's room; it was a part of "Parcel 21", which had been collected from the Talwars' house on 1 June 2008. The defence argued that the CBI had deliberately created this misunderstanding to frame the Talwars.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Also in September, the CBI tried to debunk the claim that the parents could not have heard the outside happenings because of the air conditioner's noise. It claimed that a portion of the wall between the couple's room and Aarushi's room was made of a plywood partition. It also alleged that after the murders, the Talwars hired a painter named Shohrat, who painted the partition with a colour matching the other walls of Aarushi's room. Shohrat testified that Rajesh asked him to paint the wooden partition with a wall-matching color twice - once in 2009 and again on 19 April 2010. He also stated that Rajesh asked him to remove the outermost grill gate along with the iron grill on the balcony, both of which were in good shape. The CBI implied that the parents were trying to tamper with the evidence. The Talwars branded this claim as false, saying that the rooms were separated by a brick wall that had a plywood lamination over it. The defence also stated that Shohrat had been hired to paint the entire apartment, not just the partition. Besides, the painting was done in July 2009, more than a year after the murders, and when the apartment was vacant. The Talwars also stated that they possessed e-mails from CBI that granted them the permission to renovate the apartment.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In its 2010 closure report, the CBI had stated the sequence of events on the night of the murders was unclear. However, after the court asked the Talwars to be charged with the murders, the CBI investigator AGL Kaul narrated the following possible sequence of events during his cross-examination in the court, in April 2013:


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 25 November 2013, a special CBI court held Rajesh and Nupur Talwar guilty for the two murders. The Special Judge Shyam Lal convicted the couple for murder, destruction of evidence, misleading the probe and filing a wrong FIR. On 26 November 2013, they were sentenced to life imprisonment for the twin murders.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The Talwar family called the verdict a miscarriage of justice, and alleged that the points proving innocence of Rajesh and Nupur were not produced by the CBI before the court. Journalist Avirook Sen alleged that the judge wrote the case verdict even before the defence side finished their arguments. In January 2014, the Talwars challenged the decision in the Allahabad High Court.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 12 October 2017, the High Court acquitted the Talwars of all charges, stating that the evidence presented by the CBI against the Talwars was not satisfactory beyond reasonable doubt, and therefore they must be given benefit of the doubt instead of being convicted based solely on suspicion. The High Court castigated the CBI for its theory on the murder of domestic help Hemraj in the Aarushi murder case, saying it was an "impossible hypothesis" and "patently absurd". The verdict was criticized as unjust by Hemraj's wife Khumkala, and her brother Ashok Bhushal. Hemraj's family members and relatives in Nepal continue to believe that the Talwars are guilty.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: A book analyzing the trial court verdict titled 'The Killing of Aarushi and the Murder of Justice' critiques the judgment as well as the quality of evidence that was tendered in the case. It also argues that the Aarushi case holds up a mirror to similar cases of injustice in thousands of other criminal cases in India.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: On 8 March 2018, the CBI challenged the acquittal in the Supreme Court, and on 10 August, the Supreme Court admitted the CBI's appeal.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: After the discovery of Hemraj's body, the case attracted public attention as a bizarre whodunit. The speculations about a sexual relationship between a teenage girl and her male servant provided material for yellow journalism, as did the allegations about the extra-marital affair of Aarushi's father. The critics argued that the alleged tabloid journalism by an overzealous media, along with the police's missteps, had "prejudiced the course of justice". On 22 July 2008, a Supreme Court bench consisting of Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice Markandey Katju asked the media to be careful in its coverage of the case, and abstain from making baseless allegations doubting the character of Aarushi or her father. It criticised the "sensationalist" media reports as lacking in "sensitivity, taste and decorum". On 25 July, the Ghaziabad court judge objected to the "inhuman treatment" of Thadarai, Rajkumar and Mandal by the police.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In 2012, while lodged in the Dasna Jail, Nupur Talwar expressed her wish to write a book on the case, titled "Mystery behind Aarushi's murder - A Tale of Unfortunate Mother". However, the jail authorities seized the 17 pages written by her, stating that she would need to seek permission from the court to write a book on the under-trial case.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Rajesh Talwar's sister-in-law Vandana Talwar, along with her other relatives and friends, launched a campaign to prove the innocence of the Talwars. Through the website www.justiceforaarushitalwar.com, the group blamed CBI for goof-ups in investigation. Vandana also created a Facebook page, a Twitter account and sent e-mails proclaiming the parents' innocence.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In 2008, Balaji Telefilms decided to depict an "inspired" version of the murder case on their soap opera "Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki". Nupur Talwar requested the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to stop Balaji Telefilms from airing the show, saying that the production house was trying to earn TRPs by exploiting a tragedy. However, the production house refused to change the script.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The 2015 film "Rahasya" (mystery) was inspired by the twin murders. "Talvar", another 2015 film, written by Vishal Bhardwaj and directed by Meghna Gulzar, is also based on the Aarushi-Hemraj murder case. Resembling in treatment Akira Kurosawa's 1950 Japanese film "Rashomon", "Talvar" depicts three contradictory accounts of the case, including the parents' version.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: Journalist Avirook Sen has written a book titled "Aarushi", released in 2015. The book argues that Aarushi's parents are the victims of a miscarriage of justice.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: A digital content company, Arré, has created a podcast about this case titled "". Produced by Delhi-based film-making collective Jamun, the podcast has been aired on Arré and Saavn on a weekly basis since early May 2016.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: The 2017 Tamil language movie "Nibunan" features a plot in which a young girl and a family servant are murdered by the girl's parents for having an affair. This story is seemingly inspired by Aarushi-Hemraj murder case.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In October 2017, a four-part investigative documentary series "Aarushi - Beyond Reasonable Doubt", which explores the arguments and circumstances of the case, its investigations, and the remaining unresolved questions, premiered on Channel NewsAsia. Commissioned by Channel NewsAsia, it was produced by StoryTeller Films.


title: 2008 Noida double murder case

text: In November 2017 a Star World original production in association with HBO Asia released a crime documentary mini series called "The Talwars: Behind Closed Doors."


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: Héctor Elizondo (born December 22, 1936) is an American character actor. He is known for playing Phillip Watters in the television series "Chicago Hope" (1994–2000) and Ed Alzate in the television series "Last Man Standing" (2011–2021). His film roles include "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974), "American Gigolo" (1980), "Leviathan" (1989), "Pretty Woman" (1990), "Beverly Hills Cop III" (1994), "Runaway Bride" (1999), "The Princess Diaries" (2001), and "Valentine's Day" (2010).


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: Elizondo is the recipient of an Obie Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two ALMA Awards. He has also received nominations for a Drama Desk Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Satellite Award, and five Screen Actors Guild Awards.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: Elizondo was born in New York, the son of Carmen Medina Reyes and Martín Echevarría Elizondo, a notary public and accountant. His parents were Puerto Ricans of Spanish and Basque descent who moved from Puerto Rico to New York City with the hope of finding a better life. He grew up on the Upper West Side.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: At a young age, he demonstrated a talent for sports and music. He sang for the Frank Murray Boys' Choir when he was 10 years old. Upon graduating from junior high school in 1950, he enrolled in the High School of the Performing Arts. He also attended another public high school, where he excelled in basketball and baseball. His baseball skills were good enough for him to be scouted by both the San Francisco Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1954, Elizondo enrolled in City College of New York, intending to become a history teacher. However, during his freshman year, he became a father and dropped out of college, going to work full-time to support his family. Later, he divorced and gained full custody of his son, Rodd.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: From 1962 to 1963, Elizondo studied dance at the Ballet Arts Company at Carnegie Hall. During 1962–63, he also studied acting under Mario Stiletti at Stella Adler Theatre Studio when it was located in the Dryden East Hotel on East 39th St. In 1965, he landed a part in the off-Broadway show "Kill the One-Eyed Man".


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: In 1968, he got a part in the play "The Great White Hope". His first major success came when he played "God" in the guise of a Puerto Rican steam room attendant in "Steambath", for which he won an Obie Award for his performance. Many of his roles involve playing a friend of or sympathizer to the lead character.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: In 1974, Elizondo played an ex-mafioso-turned-subway hijacker "Mr. Grey" in "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three".


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: He starred as a Puerto Rican widower on the CBS television series, "Popi" (1975–76). The short-lived series, which ran for 11 episodes, was one of the first American network television series to feature a Latino theme and cast. In 1975, he portrayed the murderer in an episode of "Columbo", "A Case of Immunity". He was a member of the cast of the 1985–86 CBS situation comedy "Foley Square", starring Margaret Colin.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: In the 1980s, Elizondo befriended Garry Marshall, who was impressed with his talent. Their first movie together was "Young Doctors in Love", in which Elizondo displays his guitar-playing talent. His role in "Pretty Woman" lasted only 10 minutes, but led to a Golden Globe nomination. In 1999, he co-starred in "Runaway Bride" as Fisher, the husband of the male protagonist's ex. Elizondo has participated in more than 80 movies (18 of which have been Marshall's). He appeared in every movie that Marshall directed, including a brief but funny appearance as a Portuguese fisherman in "Overboard", which starred Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: In 2001, he was featured in the short-lived television drama "Kate Brasher" and portrayed security head Joe in the movie "The Princess Diaries", a role he reprised in the 2004 sequel, "". As a voice-actor, he played Bane, one of the more aggressively themed characters in "". He may be best known to television audiences as Dr. Phillip Watters on the CBS television series "Chicago Hope" created by well-known television creator David E. Kelley. He has won both an Emmy and ALMA award and was nominated for a Satellite Award and several SAG Awards for playing this role. He is one of only two people to remain on the show for its entire run, the other being Adam Arkin.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: On April 30, 2008, USA Network announced that Elizondo would be cast on "Monk" as Dr. Neven Bell, Adrian Monk's new psychiatrist, following the sudden death of Stanley Kamel, the actor who played Monk's original psychiatrist, earlier that month.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: From 2011 to 2021, Elizondo played Ed Alzate on the Fox (formerly ABC) comedy "Last Man Standing", starring Tim Allen and Nancy Travis.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: Elizondo has been married three times. He became a father at the age of 19 with his first wife. His son Rodd was born on September 5, 1956, and died in 2017 at the age of 60. Since 1969, he has been married to Carolee Campbell, an Emmy Award-winning actress, photographer, and publisher. They live in Sherman Oaks, California.


title: Héctor Elizondo

text: In April 2013, Elizondo participated in the "Los Angeles Times" Festival of Books, held at the University of Southern California, promoting children's reading. Proud of his Latino heritage, Elizondo does not accept roles that he feels are stereotypical and/or demeaning in any way.


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law, also known as the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law, is an observation that in many real-life sets of numerical data, the leading digit is likely to be small. In sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford's law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.


title: Benford's law

text: The graph to the right shows Benford's law for base 10, one of infinitely many cases of a generalized law regarding numbers expressed in arbitrary (integer) bases, which rules out the possibility that the phenomenon might be an artifact of the base-10 number system. Further generalizations published in 1995 included analogous statements for both the "n"th leading digit and the joint distribution of the leading "n" digits, the latter of which leads to a corollary wherein the significant digits are shown to be a statistically dependent quantity.


title: Benford's law

text: It has been shown that this result applies to a wide variety of data sets, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, house prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, and physical and mathematical constants. Like other general principles about natural data—for example, the fact that many data sets are well approximated by a normal distribution—there are illustrative examples and explanations that cover many of the cases where Benford's law applies, though there are many other cases where Benford's law applies that resist simple explanations. Benford's Law tends to be most accurate when values are distributed across multiple orders of magnitude, especially if the process generating the numbers is described by a power law (which is common in nature).


title: Benford's law

text: The law is named after physicist Frank Benford, who stated it in 1938 in an article titled "The Law of Anomalous Numbers", although it had been previously stated by Simon Newcomb in 1881.


title: Benford's law

text: The quantity is proportional to the space between and on a logarithmic scale. Therefore, this is the distribution expected if the "logarithms" of the numbers (but not the numbers themselves) are uniformly and randomly distributed.


title: Benford's law

text: For example, a number , constrained to lie between 1 and 10, starts with the digit 1 if , and starts with the digit 9 if . Therefore, starts with the digit 1 if , or starts with 9 if . The interval is much wider than the interval (0.30 and 0.05 respectively); therefore if log is uniformly and randomly distributed, it is much more likely to fall into the wider interval than the narrower interval, i.e. more likely to start with 1 than with 9; the probabilities are proportional to the interval widths, giving the equation above (as well as the generalization to other bases besides decimal).


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law is sometimes stated in a stronger form, asserting that the fractional part of the logarithm of data is typically close to uniformly distributed between 0 and 1; from this, the main claim about the distribution of first digits can be derived.


title: Benford's law

text: An extension of Benford's law predicts the distribution of first digits in other bases besides decimal; in fact, any base . The general form is


title: Benford's law

text: For (the binary and unary) number systems, Benford's law is true but trivial: All binary and unary numbers (except for 0 or the empty set) start with the digit 1. (On the other hand, the generalization of Benford's law to second and later digits is not trivial, even for binary numbers.)


title: Benford's law

text: Examining a list of the heights of the 58 tallest structures in the world by category shows that 1 is by far the most common leading digit, "irrespective of the unit of measurement" (see "scale invariance" below):


title: Benford's law

text: Another example is the leading digit of . The sequence of the first 96 leading digits (1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 3, 6, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 3, 6, 1, ... ) exhibits closer adherence to Benford’s law than is expected for random sequences of the same length, because it is derived from a geometric sequence.


title: Benford's law

text: The discovery of Benford's law goes back to 1881, when the Canadian-American astronomer Simon Newcomb noticed that in logarithm tables the earlier pages (that started with 1) were much more worn than the other pages. Newcomb's published result is the first known instance of this observation and includes a distribution on the second digit as well. Newcomb proposed a law that the probability of a single number "N" being the first digit of a number was equal to log("N" + 1) − log("N").


title: Benford's law

text: The phenomenon was again noted in 1938 by the physicist Frank Benford, who tested it on data from 20 different domains and was credited for it. His data set included the surface areas of 335 rivers, the sizes of 3259 US populations, 104 physical constants, 1800 molecular weights, 5000 entries from a mathematical handbook, 308 numbers contained in an issue of "Reader's Digest", the street addresses of the first 342 persons listed in "American Men of Science" and 418 death rates. The total number of observations used in the paper was 20,229. This discovery was later named after Benford (making it an example of Stigler's law).


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law tends to apply most accurately to data that span several orders of magnitude. As a rule of thumb, the more orders of magnitude that the data evenly covers, the more accurately Benford's law applies. For instance, one can expect that Benford's law would apply to a list of numbers representing the populations of UK settlements. But if a "settlement" is defined as a village with population between 300 and 999, then Benford's law will not apply.


title: Benford's law

text: Consider the probability distributions shown below, referenced to a log scale. In each case, the total area in red is the relative probability that the first digit is 1, and the total area in blue is the relative probability that the first digit is 8. For the first distribution, the size of the areas of red and blue are approximately proportional to the widths of each red and blue bar. Therefore, the numbers drawn from this distribution will approximately follow Benford's law. On the other hand, for the second distribution, the ratio of the areas of red and blue is very different from the ratio of the widths of each red and blue bar. Rather, the relative areas of red and blue are determined more by the heights of the bars than the widths. Accordingly, the first digits in this distribution do not satisfy Benford's law at all.


title: Benford's law

text: Thus, real-world distributions that span several orders of magnitude rather uniformly (e.g., stock-market prices and populations of villages, towns, and cities) are likely to satisfy Benford's law very accurately. On the other hand, a distribution mostly or entirely within one order of magnitude (e.g., IQ scores or heights of human adults) is unlikely to satisfy Benford's law very accurately, if at all. However, the difference between applicable and inapplicable regimes is not a sharp cut-off: as the distribution gets narrower, the deviations from Benford's law increase gradually.


title: Benford's law

text: In 1970 Wolfgang Krieger proved what is now called the Krieger generator theorem. The Krieger generator theorem might be viewed as a justification for the assumption in the Kafri ball-and-box model that, in a given base formula_3 with a fixed number of digits 0, 1, ..., "n", ..., formula_4, digit "n" is equivalent to a Kafri box containing "n" non-interacting balls. A number of other scientists and statisticians have suggested entropy-related explanations for Benford's law.


title: Benford's law

text: Many real-world examples of Benford's law arise from multiplicative fluctuations. For example, if a stock price starts at $100, and then each day it gets multiplied by a randomly chosen factor between 0.99 and 1.01, then over an extended period the probability distribution of its price satisfies Benford's law with higher and higher accuracy.


title: Benford's law

text: The reason is that the "logarithm" of the stock price is undergoing a random walk, so over time its probability distribution will get more and more broad and smooth (see above). (More technically, the central limit theorem says that multiplying more and more random variables will create a log-normal distribution with larger and larger variance, so eventually it covers many orders of magnitude almost uniformly.) To be sure of approximate agreement with Benford's law, the distribution has to be approximately invariant when scaled up by any factor up to 10; a log-normally distributed data set with wide dispersion would have this approximate property.


title: Benford's law

text: Unlike multiplicative fluctuations, "additive" fluctuations do not lead to Benford's law: They lead instead to normal probability distributions (again by the central limit theorem), which do not satisfy Benford's law. By contrast, that hypothetical stock price described above can be written as the "product" of many random variables (i.e. the price change factor for each day), so is "likely" to follow Benford's law quite well.


title: Benford's law

text: Anton Formann provided an alternative explanation by directing attention to the interrelation between the distribution of the significant digits and the distribution of the observed variable. He showed in a simulation study that long-right-tailed distributions of a random variable are compatible with the Newcomb–Benford law, and that for distributions of the ratio of two random variables the fit generally improves. For numbers drawn from certain distributions (IQ scores, human heights) the Benford's law fails to hold because these variates obey a normal distribution, which is known not to satisfy Benford's law, since normal distributions can't span several orders of magnitude and the mantissae of their logarithms will not be (even approximately) uniformly distributed. However, if one "mixes" numbers from those distributions, for example, by taking numbers from newspaper articles, Benford's law reappears. This can also be proven mathematically: if one repeatedly "randomly" chooses a probability distribution (from an uncorrelated set) and then randomly chooses a number according to that distribution, the resulting list of numbers will obey Benford's law. A similar probabilistic explanation for the appearance of Benford's law in everyday-life numbers has been advanced by showing that it arises naturally when one considers mixtures of uniform distributions.


title: Benford's law

text: In a list of lengths, the distribution of first digits of numbers in the list may be generally similar regardless of whether all the lengths are expressed in metres, yards, feet, inches, etc. The same applies to monetary units.


title: Benford's law

text: This is not always the case. For example, the height of adult humans almost always starts with a 1 or 2 when measured in metres and almost always starts with 4, 5, 6, or 7 when measured in feet. But in a list of lengths spread evenly over many orders of magnitude—for example, a list of 1000 lengths mentioned in scientific papers that includes the measurements of molecules, bacteria, plants, and galaxies—it is reasonable to expect the distribution of first digits to be the same no matter whether the lengths are written in metres or in feet.


title: Benford's law

text: When the distribution of the first digits of a data set is scale-invariant (independent of the units that the data are expressed in), it is always given by Benford's law.


title: Benford's law

text: For example, the first (non-zero) digit on the aforementioned list of lengths should have the same distribution whether the unit of measurement is feet or yards. But there are three feet in a yard, so the probability that the first digit of a length in yards is 1 must be the same as the probability that the first digit of a length in feet is 3, 4, or 5; similarly, the probability that the first digit of a length in yards is 2 must be the same as the probability that the first digit of a length in feet is 6, 7, or 8. Applying this to all possible measurement scales gives the logarithmic distribution of Benford's law.


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law for first digits is base invariant for number systems. There are conditions and proofs of sum invariance, inverse invariance, and addition and subtraction invariance.


title: Benford's law

text: In 1972, Hal Varian suggested that the law could be used to detect possible fraud in lists of socio-economic data submitted in support of public planning decisions. Based on the plausible assumption that people who fabricate figures tend to distribute their digits fairly uniformly, a simple comparison of first-digit frequency distribution from the data with the expected distribution according to Benford's law ought to show up any anomalous results.


title: Benford's law

text: In the United States, evidence based on Benford's law has been admitted in criminal cases at the federal, state, and local levels.


title: Benford's law

text: Walter Mebane, a political scientist and statistician at the University of Michigan, was the first to apply the second-digit Benford's law-test (2BL-test) in election forensics. Such analysis is considered a simple, though not foolproof, method of identifying irregularities in election results. Scientific consensus to support the applicability of Benford's law to elections has not been reached in the literature. A 2011 study by the political scientists Joseph Deckert, Mikhail Myagkov, and Peter C. Ordeshook argued that Benford's law is problematic and misleading as a statistical indicator of election fraud. Their method was criticized by Mebane in a response, though he agreed that there are many caveats to the application of Benford's law to election data.


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law has been used as evidence of fraud in the 2009 Iranian elections. An analysis by Mebane found that the second digits in vote counts for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the winner of the election, tended to differ significantly from the expectations of Benford's law, and that the ballot boxes with very few invalid ballots had a greater influence on the results, suggesting widespread ballot stuffing. Another study used bootstrap simulations to find that the candidate Mehdi Karroubi received almost twice as many vote counts beginning with the digit 7 as would be expected according to Benford's law, while an analysis from Columbia University concluded that the probability that a fair election would produce both too few non-adjacent digits and the suspicious deviations in last-digit frequencies as found in the 2009 Iranian presidential election is less than 0.5 percent. Benford's law has also been applied for forensic auditing and fraud detection on data from the 2003 California gubernatorial election, the 2000 and 2004 United States presidential elections, and the 2009 German federal election; the Benford's Law Test was found to be "worth taking seriously as a statistical test for fraud," although "is not sensitive to distortions we know significantly affected many votes."


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law has also been misapplied to claim election fraud. When applying the law to Joe Biden's election returns for Chicago, Milwaukee, and other localities in the 2020 United States presidential election, the distribution of the first digit did not follow Benford's law. The misapplication was a result of looking at data that was tightly bound in range, which violates the assumption inherent in Benford's law that the range of the data be large. The first digit test was applied to precinct-level data, but because precincts rarely receive more than a few thousand votes or fewer than several dozen, Benford's law cannot be expected to apply. According to Mebane, "It is widely understood that the first digits of precinct vote counts are not useful for trying to diagnose election frauds."


title: Benford's law

text: Similarly, the macroeconomic data the Greek government reported to the European Union before entering the eurozone was shown to be probably fraudulent using Benford's law, albeit years after the country joined.


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law as a benchmark for the investigation of price digits has been successfully introduced into the context of pricing research. The importance of this benchmark for detecting irregularities in prices was first demonstrated in a Europe-wide study which investigated consumer price digits before and after the euro introduction for price adjustments. The introduction of the euro in 2002, with its various exchange rates, distorted existing nominal price patterns while at the same time retaining real prices. While the first digits of nominal prices distributed according to Benford's law, the study showed a clear deviation from this benchmark for the second and third digits in nominal market prices with a clear trend towards psychological pricing after the nominal shock of the euro introduction.


title: Benford's law

text: The number of open reading frames and their relationship to genome size differs between eukaryotes and prokaryotes with the former showing a log-linear relationship and the latter a linear relationship. Benford's law has been used to test this observation with an excellent fit to the data in both cases.


title: Benford's law

text: A test of regression coefficients in published papers showed agreement with Benford's law. As a comparison group subjects were asked to fabricate statistical estimates. The fabricated results conformed to Benford's law on first digits, but failed to obey Benford's law on second digits.


title: Benford's law

text: Although the chi-squared test has been used to test for compliance with Benford's law it has low statistical power when used with small samples.


title: Benford's law

text: The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test and the Kuiper test are more powerful when the sample size is small, particularly when Stephens's corrective factor is used. These tests may be unduly conservative when applied to discrete distributions. Values for the Benford test have been generated by Morrow. The critical values of the test statistics are shown below:


title: Benford's law

text: These critical values provide the minimum test statistic values required to reject the hypothesis of compliance with Benford's law at the given significance levels.


title: Benford's law

text: Two alternative tests specific to this law have been published: First, the max () statistic is given by


title: Benford's law

text: The leading factor formula_6 does not appear in the original formula by Leemis; it was added by Morrow in a later paper.


title: Benford's law

text: where FSD is the first significant digit and is the sample size. Morrow has determined the critical values for both these statistics, which are shown below:


title: Benford's law

text: Morrow has also shown that for any random variable (with a continuous PDF) divided by its standard deviation (), some value can be found so that the probability of the distribution of the first significant digit of the random variable formula_8 will differ from Benford's law by less than The value of depends on the value of and the distribution of the random variable.


title: Benford's law

text: If the goal is to conclude agreement with the Benford's law rather than disagreement, then the goodness-of-fit tests mentioned above are inappropriate. In this case the specific tests for equivalence should be applied. An empirical distribution is called equivalent to the Benford's law if a distance (for example total variation distance or the usual Euclidean distance) between the probability mass functions is sufficiently small. This method of testing with application to Benford's law is described in Ostrovski.


title: Benford's law

text: Some well-known infinite integer sequences satisfy Benford's law exactly (in the asymptotic limit as more and more terms of the sequence are included). Among these are the Fibonacci numbers, the factorials, the powers of 2, and the powers of "almost" any other number.


title: Benford's law

text: Likewise, some continuous processes satisfy Benford's law exactly (in the asymptotic limit as the process continues through time). One is an exponential growth or decay process: If a quantity is exponentially increasing or decreasing in time, then the percentage of time that it has each first digit satisfies Benford's law asymptotically (i.e. increasing accuracy as the process continues through time).


title: Benford's law

text: The square roots and reciprocals of successive natural numbers do not obey this law. Prime numbers in a finite range follow a Generalized Benford’s law, that approaches uniformity as the size of the range approaches infinity. Lists of local telephone numbers violate Benford's law. Benford's law is violated by the populations of all places with a population of at least 2500 individuals from five US states according to the 1960 and 1970 censuses, where only 19 % began with digit 1 but 20 % began with digit 2, because truncation at 2500 introduces statistical bias. The terminal digits in pathology reports violate Benford's law due to rounding.


title: Benford's law

text: Distributions that do not span several orders of magnitude will not follow Benford's law. Examples include height, weight, and IQ scores.


title: Benford's law

text: A number of criteria, applicable particularly to accounting data, have been suggested where Benford's law can be expected to apply.


title: Benford's law

text: Mathematically, Benford’s law applies if the distribution being tested fits the "Benford’s law compliance theorem". The derivation says that Benford's law is followed if the Fourier transform of the logarithm of the probability density function is zero for all integer values. Most notably, this is satisfied if the Fourier transform is zero (or negligible) for "n" ≥ 1. This is satisfied if the distribution is wide (since wide distribution implies a narrow Fourier transform). Smith summarizes thus (p. 716):


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law is followed by distributions that are wide compared with unit distance along the logarithmic scale. Likewise, the law is not followed by distributions that are narrow compared with unit distance … If the distribution is wide compared with unit distance on the log axis, it means that the spread in the set of numbers being examined is much greater than ten.


title: Benford's law

text: In short, Benford’s law requires that the numbers in the distribution being measured have a spread across at least an order of magnitude.


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law was empirically tested against the numbers (up to the 10th digit) generated by a number of important distributions, including the uniform distribution, the exponential distribution, the normal distribution, and others.


title: Benford's law

text: The uniform distribution, as might be expected, does not obey Benford's law. In contrast, the ratio distribution of two uniform distributions is well-described by Benford's law.


title: Benford's law

text: Neither the normal distribution nor the ratio distribution of two normal distributions (the Cauchy distribution) obey Benford's law. Although the half-normal distribution does not obey Benford's law, the ratio distribution of two half-normal distributions does. Neither the right-truncated normal distribution nor the ratio distribution of two right-truncated normal distributions are well described by Benford's law. This is not surprising as this distribution is weighted towards larger numbers.


title: Benford's law

text: Benford's law also describes the exponential distribution and the ratio distribution of two exponential distributions well. The fit of chi-squared distribution depends on the degrees of freedom (df) with good agreement with df = 1 and decreasing agreement as the df increases. The "F"-distribution is fitted well for low degrees of freedom. With increasing dfs the fit decreases but much more slowly than the chi-squared distribution. The fit of the log-normal distribution depends on the mean and the variance of the distribution. The variance has a much greater effect on the fit than does the mean. Larger values of both parameters result in better agreement with the law. The ratio of two log normal distributions is a log normal so this distribution was not examined.


title: Benford's law

text: Other distributions that have been examined include the Muth distribution, Gompertz distribution, Weibull distribution, gamma distribution, log-logistic distribution and the exponential power distribution all of which show reasonable agreement with the law. The Gumbel distribution – a density increases with increasing value of the random variable – does not show agreement with this law.


title: Benford's law

text: It is possible to extend the law to digits beyond the first. In particular, for any given number of digits, the probability of encountering a number starting with the string of digits "n" of that length discarding leading zeros is given by


title: Benford's law

text: For example, the probability that a number starts with the digits 3, 1, 4 is , as in the figure on the right. Numbers satisfying this include 3.14159..., 314285.7... and 0.00314465... .


title: Benford's law

text: This result can be used to find the probability that a particular digit occurs at a given position within a number. For instance, the probability that a "2" is encountered as the second digit is


title: Benford's law

text: The distribution of the "n"-th digit, as "n" increases, rapidly approaches a uniform distribution with 10% for each of the ten digits, as shown below. Four digits is often enough to assume a uniform distribution of 10% as "0" appears 10.0176% of the time in the fourth digit, while "9" appears 9.9824% of the time.


title: Benford's law

text: Average and moments of random variables for the digits 1 to 9 following this law have been calculated:


title: Benford's law

text: A table of the exact probabilities for the joint occurrence of the first two digits according to Benford's law is available, as is the population correlation between the first and second digits: .


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff (9 April 1865 – 20 December 1937) was a German general, politician and military theorist. He achieved fame during World War I for his central role in the German victories at Liège and Tannenberg in 1914. Following his appointment as First Quartermaster-general () of the Imperial Army's Great General Staff in 1916, he became the chief policymaker in a "de facto" military dictatorship that dominated Germany for the rest of the war. After Germany's defeat, he contributed significantly to the Nazis' rise to power.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Erich Ludendorff came from a family of the minor nobility in Ludendorff, (now Kruszewnia), located in the Prussian province of Posen. After completing his education as a cadet, he received his commission as a junior officer in 1885. Later in 1893, Ludendorff was admitted to the prestigious German War Academy and was recommended by its commandant to the General Staff Corps only a year later. By 1904, he had rapidly risen in rank to become a member of the Army's Great General Staff, where he oversaw the development of the Schlieffen Plan.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Despite being temporarily removed from the Great General Staff for meddling in German politics, Ludendorff restored his standing in the army through his success as a commander in World War I. On 16 August 1914, he led the successful German assault on Liège, a feat for which he earned the Pour le Mérite. Upon being transferred to the Eastern Front under the command of General Paul von Hindenburg, Ludendorff was instrumental in inflicting a series of crushing defeats against the Russians, including at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. By 29 August 1916, he had successfully lobbied for Hindenburg's appointment as Supreme Commander of the German Army as well as his own promotion to Quartermaster General of the army high command. Once he and Hindenburg had established what some authors describe as a "de facto" military dictatorship, Ludendorff directed Germany's entire military strategy and war effort until the end of the conflict. In this capacity, he secured Russia's defeat in the east and launched a new wave of offensives on the Western Front resulting in advances not seen since the war's outbreak. However, by the end of 1918, all improvements in Germany's fortunes were reversed after its forces' decisive defeat in the Second Battle of the Marne and the Allies' Hundred Days Offensive. Faced with the war effort's collapse and a growing popular revolution, the German Emperor, Wilhelm II, forced Ludendorff to resign.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: After the war, Ludendorff became a prominent nationalist leader, and a promoter of the stab-in-the-back myth, which posited that Germany's defeat and the settlement reached at Versailles were the result of a treasonous conspiracy by Marxists, Freemasons and Jews. He also took part in the failed 1920 Kapp Putsch and 1923 Beer Hall Putsch before unsuccessfully running for President against Field Marshal Hindenburg, his wartime superior. Thereafter, he retired from politics and devoted his final years to the study of military theory. His most famous work in this field was ("The Total War"), where he argued that a nation's entire physical and moral resources should remain forever poised for mobilization because peace was merely an interval in a never-ending chain of wars. Ludendorff died of liver cancer in Munich in 1937.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Ludendorff was born on 9 April 1865 in Ludendorff near , in the Province of Posen and Kingdom of Prussia (now Kruszewnia, County, Poland), the third of six children of August Wilhelm Ludendorff (1833–1905). His father was descended from Pomeranian merchants who had been raised to the status of a Junker.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Erich's mother, Klara Jeanette Henriette von Tempelhoff (1840–1914), was the daughter of the noble but impoverished Friedrich August Napoleon von Tempelhoff (1804–1868) and his wife Jeannette Wilhelmine von Dziembowska (1816–1854), who came from a Germanized Polish landed family on the side of her father Stephan von Dziembowski (1779–1859). Through Dziembowski's wife Johanna Wilhelmine von Unruh (1793–1862), Erich was a remote descendant of the Counts of , the Dukes of Liegnitz and Brieg and the Marquesses and Electors of Brandenburg.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Ludendorff had a stable and comfortable childhood, growing up on a small family farm. He received his early schooling from a maternal aunt and had a gift for mathematics, as did his younger brother Hans, who became a distinguished astronomer. Upon passing the entrance exam for the Cadet School at with distinction, he was put in a class two years ahead of his age group, and thereafter he was consistently first in his class. The famous World War II General Heinz Guderian attended the same Cadet School, which produced many well-trained German officers. Ludendorff's education continued at the at near Berlin through to 1882.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: In 1885, Ludendorff was commissioned as a subaltern into the 57th Infantry Regiment, then at Wesel. Over the next eight years, he was promoted to lieutenant and saw further service in the 2nd Marine Battalion, based at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, and in the 8th Grenadier Guards at Frankfurt on the Oder. His service reports reveal the highest praise, with frequent commendations. In 1893, he entered the War Academy, where the commandant, General Meckel, recommended him to the General Staff, to which he was appointed in 1894. He rose rapidly and was a senior staff officer at the headquarters of V Corps from 1902 to 1904.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Next he joined the Great General Staff in Berlin, which was commanded by Alfred von Schlieffen, Ludendorff directed the Second or Mobilization Section from 1904 to 1913. Soon he was joined by Max Bauer, a brilliant artillery officer, who became a close friend.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: In 1910 at age 45 "the 'old sinner', as he liked to hear himself called" married the daughter of a wealthy factory owner, Margarethe Schmidt (1875–1936). They met in a rainstorm when he offered his umbrella. She divorced to marry him, bringing three stepsons and a stepdaughter. Their marriage pleased both families and he was devoted to his stepchildren.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: By 1911, Ludendorff was a full colonel. His section was responsible for writing the mass of detailed orders needed to bring the mobilized troops into position to implement the Plan. For this they covertly surveyed frontier fortifications in Russia, France and Belgium. For instance, in 1911 Ludendorff visited the key Belgian fortress city of Liège. Before the war, he was an Oberst in General Staff who studied the march route of the army in case of war.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Deputies of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which became the largest party in the after the German federal elections of 1912, seldom gave priority to army expenditures, whether to build up its reserves or to fund advanced weaponry such as Krupp's siege cannons. Instead, they preferred to concentrate military spending on the Imperial German Navy. Ludendorff's calculations showed that to properly implement the Schlieffen Plan the Army lacked six corps.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Members of the General Staff were instructed to keep out of politics and the public eye, but Ludendorff shrugged off such restrictions. With a retired general, August Keim, and the head of the Pan-German League, Heinrich Class, he vigorously lobbied the for the additional men. In 1913 funding was approved for four additional corps but Ludendorff was transferred to regimental duties as commander of the 39th (Lower Rhine) Fusiliers, stationed at Düsseldorf. "I attributed the change partly for my having pressed for those three additional army corps."


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Barbara Tuchman characterizes Ludendorff in her book "The Guns of August" as Schlieffen's devoted disciple who was a glutton for work and a man of granite character but who was deliberately friendless and forbidding and therefore remained little known or liked. It is true that as his wife testified, "Anyone who knows Ludendorff knows that he has not a spark of humor...". He was voluble nonetheless, although he shunned small talk. John Lee, states that while Ludendorff was with his Fusiliers, "he became the perfect regimental commander ... the younger officers came to adore him." His adjutant, Wilhelm Breucker, became a devoted lifelong friend.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: At the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914 Ludendorff was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff to the German Second Army under General Karl von Bülow. His assignment was largely due to his previous work investigating defenses of Liège, Belgium. At the beginning of the Battle of Liège, Ludendorff was an observer with the 14th Brigade, which was to infiltrate the city at night and secure the bridges before they could be destroyed. The brigade commander was killed on 5 August, so Ludendorff led the successful assault to occupy the city and its citadel. In the following days, two of the forts guarding the city were taken by desperate frontal infantry attacks, while the remaining forts were smashed by huge Krupp 42-cm and Austro-Hungarian Škoda 30.5-cm howitzers. By 16 August, all the forts around Liège had fallen, allowing the German First Army to advance. As the victor of Liège, Ludendorff was awarded Germany's highest military decoration for gallantry, the Pour le Mérite, presented by Kaiser Wilhelm II himself on 22 August.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: German mobilization earmarked a single army, the Eighth, to defend their eastern frontier. When two Russian armies invaded East Prussia earlier than expected the command of the Eighth Army, Maximilian von Prittwitz with Georg von Waldersee as Chief of Staff, performed subpar and reportedly panicked. They accordingly were dismissed from command by the (OHL), the German Supreme Army Command. The War Cabinet chose a retired general, Paul von Hindenburg, as commander, while the "OHL" assigned Ludendorff as his new chief of staff. Hindenburg and Ludendorff first met on their private train heading east. They agreed that they must annihilate the nearest Russian army before they tackled the second. On arrival, they discovered that Max Hoffmann had already shifted much of the 8th Army by rail to the south to do just that, in an amazing feat of logistical planning. Nine days later the Eighth Army surrounded most of a Russian army at Tannenberg, taking 92,000 prisoners in one of the great victories in German history. Twice during the battle Ludendorff wanted to break off, fearing that the second Russian army was about to strike their rear, but Hindenburg held firm.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: The Germans turned on the second invading army in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes; it fled with heavy losses to escape encirclement. During the rest of 1914, commanding an Army Group, Hindenburg and Ludendorff staved off the projected invasion of German Silesia by dexterously moving their outnumbered forces into Russian Poland, fighting the battle of the Vistula River, which ended with a brilliantly executed withdrawal during which they destroyed the Polish railway lines and bridges needed for an invasion. When the Russians had repaired most of the damage the Germans struck their flank in the battle of Łódź, where they almost surrounded another Russian army. Masters of surprise and deft maneuver, the pair argued that if properly reinforced they could trap the entire Russian army in Poland. During the winter of 1914–15 they lobbied passionately for this strategy, but were rebuffed by the "OHL".


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Early in 1915 Hindenburg and Ludendorff surprised the Russian army that still held a toehold in East Prussia by attacking in a snowstorm and surrounding it in the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes. The "OHL" then transferred Ludendorff, but Hindenburg's personal plea to the Kaiser reunited them. Erich von Falkenhayn, supreme commander at the "OHL", came east to attack the flank of the Russian army that was pushing through the Carpathian passes towards Hungary. Employing overwhelming artillery, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians broke through the line between and and kept pushing until the Russians were driven out of most of Galicia, in Austro-Hungarian Poland. During this advance Falkenhayn rejected schemes to try to cut off the Russians in Poland, preferring direct frontal attacks. Outgunned, during the summer of 1915 the Russian commander Grand Duke Nicholas shortened his lines by withdrawing from most of Poland, destroying railroads, bridges, and many buildings while driving 743,000 Poles,


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: During the winter of 1915–16 Ludendorff's headquarters was in Kaunas. The Germans occupied present-day Lithuania, western Latvia, and north eastern Poland, an area almost the size of France. Ludendorff demanded Germanization of the conquered territories and far-ranging annexations, offering land to German settlers; "see ". Far-reaching plans envisioned Courland and Lithuania turned into border states ruled by German military governors answerable only to the Kaiser. He proposed massive annexations and colonization in Eastern Europe in the event of the victory of the German Reich, and was one of the main supporters of the Polish Border Strip. Ludendorff planned to combine German settlement and Germanisation in conquered areas with expulsions of native populations; and envisioned an eastern German empire whose resources would be used in future war with Great Britain and the United States Ludendorff's plans went as far as making Crimea a German colony. As to the various nations and ethnic groups in conquered territories, Ludendorff believed they were "incapable of producing real culture"


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: On 16 March 1916, the Russians, now with adequate supplies of cannons and shells, attacked parts of the new German defenses, intending to penetrate at two points and then to pocket the defenders. They attacked almost daily until the end of the month, but the Lake Naroch Offensive failed, "choked in swamp and blood".


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: The Russians did better attacking the Austro-Hungarians in the south; the Brusilov Offensive cracked their lines with a well-prepared surprise wide-front attack led by well-schooled assault troops. The breakthrough was finally stemmed by Austro-Hungarian troops recalled from Italy stiffened with German advisers and reserves. In July, Russian attacks on the Germans in the north were beaten back. On 27 July 1916, Hindenburg was given command of all troops on the Eastern Front from the Baltic to Brody in the Ukraine. Ludendorff and Hindenburg visited their new command on a special train, and then set up headquarters in Brest-Litovsk. By August 1916 their front was holding everywhere.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: In the West in 1916 the Germans attacked unsuccessfully at Verdun and soon were reeling under British and French blows along the Somme. Ludendorff's friends at the "OHL", led by Max Bauer, lobbied for him relentlessly. The balance was tipped when Romania entered the war on the side of the Entente, thrusting into Hungary. Falkenhayn was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Hindenburg on 29 August 1916. Ludendorff was again his chief of staff as first Quartermaster general, with the stipulation that he would have joint responsibility. He was promoted to General of the Infantry. Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg warned the War Cabinet: "You don't know Ludendorff, who is only great at a time of success. If things go badly he loses his nerve."


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Their first concern was the sizable Romanian Army, so troops sent from the Western Front checked Romanian and Russian incursions into Hungary. Then Romania was invaded from the south by German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman troops commanded by August von Mackensen and from the north by a German and Austro-Hungarian army commanded by Falkenhayn. Bucharest fell in December 1916. According to Mackensen, Ludendorff's distant management consisted of "floods of telegrams, as superfluous as they were offensive."


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: When sure that the Romanians would be defeated the "OHL" moved west, retaining the previous staff except for the operations officer, blamed for Verdun. They toured the Western Front meeting—and evaluating—commanders, learning about their problems and soliciting their opinions. At each meeting Ludendorff did most of talking for Hindenburg. There would be no further attacks at Verdun and the Somme would be defended by revised tactics that exposed fewer men to British shells. A new backup defensive line would be built, like the one they had constructed in the east. The Allies would call the new fortifications the Hindenburg Line. The German goal was victory, which they defined as a Germany with extended borders that could be more easily defended in the next war.


title: Erich Ludendorff

text: Hindenburg was given titular command over all of the forces of the Central Powers. Ludendorff's hand was everywhere. Every day he was on the telephone with the staffs of their armies and the Army was deluged with "Ludendorff's paper barrage" of orders, instructions and demands for information. His finger extended into every aspect of the German war effort. He issued the two daily communiques, and often met with the newspaper and newsreel reporters. Before long the public idolized him as the German Army's brain.