New Delhi, Mar 12: While the Delhi Police is yet to come out with a conclusive report over the cause of death of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, a report has claimed that she was poisoned and the investigating authorities were aware of the fact. The first report, prepared by the then Deputy Commissioner of Police BS Jaiswal in the Sunanda Pushkar death case, said that it was not a suicide. The report added that the Sub Divisional Magistrate at Vasant Vihar, Alok Sharma, was of the view that it was not a case of suicide and he had ordered the SHO of Sarojini Nagar police station to investigate the death as a case of murder.
The decision was made after the postmortem report said that the cause of death was poisoning. The injuries were caused by blunt force and there was an injection mark.
“The cause of death to the best of my knowledge and belief in this case is poisoning. The circumstantial evidences are suggestive of alprazolam poisoning. All the injuries mentioned are caused by blunt force, simple in nature, non-contributing to death and are produced in scuffle, except injury number 10 with an injection mark. Injury number 12 is teeth bite mark. The injuries number 1 to 15 is of various durations ranging from 12 hours to 4 days,” the report said.
The report also said that Sunanda Pushkar‘s body had scuffle marks. “These seems to have been caused due to scuffle between Sunanda Pushkar and her Husband Shashi Tharoor as per the statement of their personal attendant Narain Singh,” said the report. The report was submitted to then Southern Delhi range Joint Commissioner of Police Vivek Gogia. It was reportedly given to the home ministry as well.
DNA reported that the police did not file a case into this matter even after the cause of the death was allegedly found. And when the matter was transferred to crime branch after a week and it decided to file an FIR of murder and start the probe, Gogia reportedly managed to get the case back within four hours from crime branch.
The crime branch had also visited the crime spot. The decision of then Commissioner of Police BS Bassi allegedly led to delay in registration of FIR for a year and investigation for almost two years, reported DNA.
The secret report had all the annexures, which include post-mortem, chemical, biological and finger prints reports, accessed by DNA, separately and each report allegedly pointed towards murder yet the police allegedly did not register a case.
Interestingly, the report questioned the teeth bite marks on the hand of Pushkar and also the injection mark on her hand. “Whether poisoned was orally given or injected is a matter to be probed,” the report stated.
On January 17, 2014, at about 9 pm, police came to know that Sunanda Pushkar died in Room Number 345, which is a suite, at Hotel Leela Palace. Preliminary enquiries stated that she had checked in to this hotel on January 15, 2014, at 5: 46 pm. Room number 307 was given to her earlier but she moved to Room number 345 on January 16 afternoon.
Also, crime branch sleuths and journalist Nalini Singh stated that Sunanda wanted a press conference. At 3 pm, she had asked her assistant to take out her white dress as she wanted to hold a press conference. She was found dead soon after. Since the deceased had died within seven years of her marriage, SDM Alok Sharma was informed who inspected the place of crime and conducted the inquest proceedings.
“The death was mysterious and everything pointed towards murder from day one,” said a senior police officer who was then investigating the case.
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