6 Questioned in Sunanda Murder Case
Published: 09th January 2015 06:00 AM | Last Updated: 09th January 2015 06:00 AM | A+A A-
NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Thursday grilled six people, including Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor’s domestic help Narayan Singh, to find out the sequence of events that led to the death of Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar in January last year. Police, however, made it clear that they had not yet approached Tharoor to join in the investigation.
“All the six people were questioned for three to four hours during morning and they were allowed to leave after they gave their statement,” said a senior police officer.
Tharoor’s staff members had received calls on Wednesday from police asking them to join the probe. Narayan, who was in Himachal Pradesh, came to Delhi on Thursday morning and went to the police station.
“Out of the six people questioned today (on Thursday), two were present in the hotel suite at the time of the incident,” said a source, adding that “it is a bigger conspiracy and it will take time to unravel it”.
Interestingly, the police almost ignored the case for a year and did not even bother to find out the larger conspiracy behind the murder. On Thursday, the Special Investigating Team formed to probe the case held a nearly six-seven hour long meeting at the police headquarters to discuss the various issues related to the case.
“The Investigative Officer of the case and other team members met Joint Commissioner and discussed various issue related to the case,” said the source.
Narayan was present at the hotel when Pushkar died. The police officials also said that they would summon other members of Tharoor’s staff as well as hotel staff for questioning in the next few days.
Pushkar, 52, was found dead on the night of January 17 last year in a suite of Leela Palace in Chanakyapuri that she was sharing with her husband. The police registered a murder case on January 4 after AIIMS submitted conclusive post-mortem report which stated she died due to poisoning.
Meanwhile, Delhi Police Commissioner(CP) B S Bassi said that Tharoor has so far not been asked to join the investigation into the case. “We have not served any formal legal notice on anyone. The investigation officer is yet to get more information and, only after that, he will decide which person is to be examined,” Bassi said.
The commissioner also stated that as of now no notice has been given to Tharoor because there are many facets to investigate. Over Tharoor’s complaint that the investigators were pressuring his Narayan and trying to implicate him in his wife’s death, the Commissioner refuted the allegation and said the policemen were doing their duty.
Earlier, following Sunanda’s sudden death, the AIIMS medical board had concluded that her death was due to poisoning which “she had consumed orally”. “However, injectable route also cannot be ruled out,” said the medical report which has quoted in its FIR. According to FIR accessed by Express, “The cause of death in this case is poisoning. The poisoning is through oral route, however injectable route too also can’t be ruled out.”
On the basis of the medical report, the police had registered a case of murder. Interestingly, the FIR did not mention anything about circumstantial evidence. It also stated that there were two unidentified finger prints at the hotel suite, where Sunanda was found dead.