Sunanda Pushkar’s death was unnatural: Delhi Police chief

Raajeesh Kashyap / Hindustan Times via Getty Images

In a startling revelation, the Delhi Police chief BS Bassi on Friday said that the former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar did not die a natural death.

“As far as evidences are concerned until now, Sunanda Pushkar’s death was unnatural. I can say this with certainty,” Bassi told reporters on Friday.

Pushkar’s viscera samples were sent to an FBI lab in Washington DC in February last year for clarity on the kind of poison that killed her. However, in this very report the FBI has ruled out the possibility of radioactive poisoning, which was suggested in the initial post-mortem report.

The Delhi Police was sent the AIIMS medical board’s ‘advice’ on the FBI lab report on viscera samples of Sunanda Pushkar earlier today before Bassi spoke to reporters.

Aged 53, Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a 5 star hotel room in Delhi in January 2014, just a few days after she publically accused her husband Shashi Tharoor of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar.

The day before she died mysteriously, she had a Twitter spat with Mehr Tarar over this alleged affair. An initial autopsy carried out by doctors at Delhi’s AIIMS hospital concluded that she probably died due to an overdose of anti-depressant drugs; but the police claimed she was poisoned.

Due to this conflicting information, the FBI’s help was solicited. A few months later, there were also reports about polonium poisoning (radioactive poisoning) causing her death. This was virtually ruled out by the FBI’s report.

The police registered a case of murder the first time around, and have called Mr Tharoor in for questioning on multiple occasions; yet named no suspects. They have conducted polygraph tests on 6 people. These people include, Tharoor’s driver Bajrangi, their domestic help Narayan Singh and Sanjay Dewan, a close friend of the couple.

Shashi and Sunanda Tharoor were married for a little over four years. They had both been married twice before. Rumours of her husband being involved in her murder had been doing rounds after her death. However, Mr Tharoor has repeatedly cooperated with the officials for investigations and has never been the prime suspect.

– By Prithvi Punjabi

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