NEW DELHI: Former Union minister Shashi Tharoor informed a Delhi court that former AIIMS forensic chief Sudhir Gupta concealed the autopsy report of his wife Sunanda Pushkar. Citing the prosecution report, Tharoor’s lawyer told Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj that Gupta concealed the original copy of the report and was flashing the documents in the media. “Original documents are with Dr Sudhir Gupta who no longer works with AIIMS. Those documents should not be with him. How can he carry documents wherever he goes? Those documents need to be filed in the court.
“It is deliberately concealed. Gupta, who has retired already, is going and flashing documents in media,” senior advocate Vikas Pahwa said. Pahwa made the allegations while seeking certain documents provided to him by the prosecution in electronic form, saying he was not able to access them. “Each and every document on which the reliance is placed should be given,” the counsel said.
Tharoor, meanwhile, was granted exemption from personal appearance by the court for the day, after a request was made by his counsel in this regard. Special Public Prosecutor Atul Srivastava, appearing for Delhi police, opposed the submissions made by Tharoor’s advocate saying that “26 adjournments were taken during 8 months 18 days, between the filing of charge sheet and the committal of case to the special court.”
The court has now put up the matter for March 15 when it will pronounce order on Tharoor’s plea seeking documents. The court had on February 4 sent the case to Sessions Court for further proceedings since the offence under Section 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) was triable by a sessions judge.
Tharoor has been charged under sections 498-A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 of the IPC, but has not been arrested. Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel in Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014. With agency inputs