The entrance to the Talwars’ flat in Noida, (below) Rajesh and Nupur Talwar. Pictures by Prem Singh

New Delhi, Aug. 3: Rajesh Talwar’s Noida flat may be on the block but property consultants feel selling it won’t be easy, like the other horror houses waiting for buyers.

Sources close to Talwar said he hadn’t stepped into L-32 Jalvayu Vihar, in Noida’s Sector 25, since his release after 50 days in jail as a suspect in daughter Aarushi’s murder.

The dentist is said to shudder at the thought of having to live in the house where his daughter and domestic help Hemraj were murdered on May 15 night.

Apparently, he has told wife Nupur he would like to
move back to Delhi. The couple had shifted to Noida from the capital’s Hauz Khas area after Aarushi was born.

“He doesn’t want to live there any longer. He has fond memories of the house with Aarushi. Now he is devoured by sadness. This is the most tragic incident of his life and the house reminds him of it,” a friend of the Talwars said.

After his release, Talwar put up with his in-laws a few blocks from Jalvayu Vihar. He cannot stay in his apartment, the site of a CBI investigation, but could have paid a visit had he wanted to.

Any sale, though, can take place only after the CBI completes its probe which, the sources said, could take several months.

Noida developers put the value of the house at Rs 45-50 lakh. “If the Talwars part with it now, it will be a distress sale for emotional reasons. He is a successful dentist and a loss of Rs 2-3 lakh won’t affect him. In India, one can even sell a graveyard these days,” said Akash Aggarwal of Aggarwal Associates, which deals in properties in Noida, east Delhi, Gurgaon and Indirapuram, a township near Ghaziabad town.

Aggarwal recounted how the east Delhi home of Shoaib Ilyasi, who produced India’s Most Wanted, changed hands despite his wife allegedly committing suicide there.

“Ilyasi’s home in Mayur Vihar was sold at the market price although it was well known that his wife was said to have stabbed herself in the house,” Aggarwal said.

Closer to the Talwars’ home, Maninder Singh Pandher, an accused in the Nithari serial killings, tried selling his D-5 house in Noida’s Sector 36 but is still waiting for a deal.

Other real estate agents accept that selling tragedy-tarred houses isn’t easy but add that a lot depends on the sales pitch.

Satyakam Mukherjee, a dealer in Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park who was involved in the sale of one such house, said: “One needs to reduce the price. One has to show the good features of the house and argue that the low price is an opportunity that won’t come easily again. We also help arrange for priests (for a purging ritual) if a buyer is superstitious.”

Overseas, too, such sales haven’t been simple or profitable. The California condominium that was the scene of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman on June 12, 1994 — allegedly by her footballer-husband .J. Simpson — was put up for sale soon after the killings. It sat on the market for two-and-a-half years and finally sold for $200,000 less than what Nicole had paid for it.

Later, after the buyer remodelled the 1991 property and described it in the listings as “stylish and elegant with four bedrooms, high ceilings and open spaces”, it won a super deal.

There are real estate consultants abroad who specialise in selling such “horror houses”, but such expertise isn’t easy to find in India.

Here, the practice is to wait till the stigma fades. That’s what the family of Nishi Banga, the 70-year-old found murdered and trussed up in her Greater Kailash home on December 12 last year, have chosen to do. Her sons and husband, who live abroad, have decided not to rent out or sell the house in a hurry.

The Talwars’ flat, under the spotlight for months, too would take time to regain much-needed anonymity.