Sunanda case: Police to submit report in SC
NEW DELHI : The Delhi Police on Tuesday said they will submit a status report before the Supreme Court in connection with the probe into the death of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor.
More than four years after the Sunanda’s death, police have not been able to reach a conclusion and said the probe is underway.
In February, the apex court issued a notice to the Delhi Police on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy’s appeal challenging the Delhi High Court order dismissing his plea for a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the case.
Dependra Pathak, special commissioner and chief spokesperson of Delhi Police, said, “Since the matter is being heard by the Supreme Court, it will not be appropriate to comment on it. The investigating team is working professionally and all aspects related to the case is being investigated. We will submit a report in the court.”
Swamy has moved the top court after his plea, seeking a probe by a court-monitored special investigation team (SIT) into Sunanda’s death, was dismissed by the Delhi High Court in October last year.
The apex court also asked Swamy to prove maintainability in the case.
On being asked about the progress made so far in the case, Pathak refused to share details of the investigation. “Since the matter is sub-judice, it will not be right to discuss details of the investigation. Delhi Police will disclose the details when it is the right time,” he added.
Sunanda,51, was found dead in the suite of a luxury hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014. In January 2015, a year after her death, Delhi Police registered a case of murder after a medical report said that her death was unnatural and was caused due to poisoning. Nobody has been named as a suspect as yet. It was not clear whether Sunanda had consumed poison on her own or it was administered forcefully or by injection, police said.
Pushkar’s viscera samples were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lab in Washington DC to determine the type of poison that killed her after an AIIMS medical board identified poisoning as the reason behind her death. The board did not specify the type of poison and asked police to send the samples to a lab outside India.