Almost a year after Sunanda Pushkar’s death in a Delhi hotel under mysterious circumstances, Delhi Police has registered an FIR against unknown persons for murder by an unknown poison administered in an unknown way. The sudden death of the 52-year-old wife of a Union minister — at the time, her husband, Shashi Tharoor, was minister of state for human resource development in the Manmohan Singh government — was bound to attract attention. But by filing a murder case nearly a year after the fact, when no new information has come to light, Delhi Police seems only to be making a spectacle of itself. It has failed to bring any modicum of clarity or closure to the high-profile case.
The police’s forensic information set has not changed since January 2014, when, a few days after Pushkar’s death, a three-member AIIMS medical panel conducted an autopsy and submitted its report to Delhi Police. According to the report, the death was unnatural and the cause was poisoning by an unknown substance. Subsequently, on the police’s asking, the panel revisited the case and the viscera samples were also separately analysed by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory. The findings of these investigations were contained in a second report submitted in September 2014. But the conclusions were the same — unnatural death caused by an unknown poison. It was after a series of exchanges between the AIIMS panel and Delhi Police — the medical forensic conclusions remained the same — that ended in December that the FIR was filed. However, without further sleuthing, these findings alone cannot be linked to murder — suicide and accident remain plausible explanations. Does the police have any additional evidence that suggests Pushkar was murdered? If it does, why did it take so long to gather it? The onus is on Delhi Police to clear the air that is thickening with rumour, speculation and unsubstantiated allegations.
Reportedly, the viscera samples will now be sent abroad for testing to determine the unknown poison. But going by the police bumbling on the case so far, a speedy closure seems unlikely.
