FBI report sets off fresh speculation
The Delhi police on Friday reaffirmed that the death of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, was “not natural”, as evident from the final report by an AIIMS medical board after analysing the FBI’s findings on her viscera samples.
Confusion prevailed over the nature of poisoning at this juncture as Delhi police commissioner Bhim Sain Bassi ruled out the presence of any “radioactive substance” in Sunanda’s body while Sudhir Gupta, head of the AIIMS forensic science department, claimed that the FBI “has not ruled out completely the presence of radioactive substances in the viscera samples”. While it has been established that Sunanda died of poisoning, the authorities, and the police in particular, are yet to reveal the nature of the poison.
Dr Gupta, who led the team which conducted the post-mortem on Sunanda’s body, said “due to degraded condition of the viscera samples, they (FBI) could not read the intensity of the substances”. Dr Gupta maintained that the FBI analysis of stomach, spleen, liver, kidney and urine had endorsed the cause of death, saying that “the same poison is present in all the viscera”. He added: “The FBI endorsed the AIIMS post-mortem report, saying the cause of death is poisoning. The FBI also mentioned the presence of a “dangerous chemical”, which may cause death if given (in) injectable (form).” It was speculated that some radioactive substance, probably Polonium 210, was found in her body.
This development could spell trouble for the Congress MP, and SIT sources said he was likely to be summoned again for questioning soon. “This time the SIT would be armed with a fresh questionnaire based on new findings,” a source said. The police chief’s reaffirmation over a year after the Delhi police had sprung a surprise by filing a murder case in Sunanda’s death based on the confirmation by AIIMS that the cause of death was “poisoning”. Sunanda was found dead on January 17, 2014 at Leela Palace Hotel in New Delhi’s Chanakyapuri diplomatic area soon after she had a spat over Twitter with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar. Allegations flew thick and fast that Sunanda had also threatened to reveal some alleged murky deals in the Indian Premier League.
It may be recalled that after a controversy, Sunanda had quit Rendezvous Sports World, which was a stakeholder in the IPL Kochi franchise, after she decided to return her “free equity” worth '70 crores to the franchise. There were allegations that Mr Tharoor was involved in some controversial role in the IPL cricket team.
The matter took a political turn as the Congress accused the BJP government of pursuing “vendetta politics” to hound Shashi Tharoor and other party leaders through a series of “inneunedos, insinuations and half-baked truths” over the murder of his wife Sunanda Pushkar. “Despite a year having passed, the police are still clueless about the cause or the nature of the murder or arresting of the guilty. But BJP leaders like Subramanian Swamy carried on with a malicious witch-hunt against Tharoor, quoting evidence that could only be in the possession of the investigating agencies”, Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala said.
While Mr Gupta talked of the possibility of radioactive susbtances in her body, the police chief said he has “no knowledge” about any mention of any dangerous chemical in the FBI report. “The FBI report had said none of the samples contained any radioactive material. I can confirm there’s no radioactive material but certain other findings are there. We had given the entire report to the medical board, which examined it and gave us an 11-page report with 32 pages of annexures, which we are examining,” Mr Bassi said. He revealed that the FBI report had said that “radioactive levels were within acceptable range” and has ruled out any “radioactive angle”. The police chief said the FBI had found certain other chemical compounds. The medical board has given certain conclusions. “We will investigate those,” he added.
