The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) has moved an application in the Delhi High Court seeking to replace Sudhir Kumar Gupta as the head of the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology Department at the institute. The court is slated to hear the matter on July 23.
Announcing the move here on Tuesday, AIIMS spokesperson Amit Gupta said that the institute has proposed the name of D. N. Bharadwaj, who is the senior most professor in the department, to replace Dr. Gupta.
The statement comes amidst allegations by Dr. Gupta of discrimination by the AIIMS administration for “refusing to act unprofessionally in the Sunanda Pushkar case”.
Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, was found dead on January 17 last year at a city’s five-star hotel.
Dr. Gupta had claimed that pressure was mounted on him to change the Pushkar autopsy report, and state that the death was “natural”.
Dr. Gupta said the death was because of “poisoning”. He has also written to the chief vigilance commission complaining that he was pressured by top officials to present a “false report”.
The AIIMS spokesperson said, “The application has been moved in the backdrop of the court’s March 25 direction by which it had asked the institute to take its permission before replacing Dr. Gupta.”
The court’s March 25 order had come on Dr. Gupta’s plea challenging an earlier decision of the Central Administrative Tribunal rejecting his charge that Dr. O.P. Murty was promoted after purging his seniority, with the purpose of obtaining a “tailor-made report” in the Pushkar case.
The AIIMS administration also said, “They might take administrative action against Dr. Gupta and issue him a show-cause notice.”
The spokesperson said there was no extraneous pressure ever on Dr. Gupta with regard to his medical opinion in any case.
On Tuesday, another physician Adarsh Kumar, who was part of Dr. Gupta’s team that conducted the autopsy, claimed, “Pressure was put on him and other doctors in the forensic department to pass off Sunanda’s death as natural.” Dr. Kumar along with Shashank Puniya was part of the team that conducted the autopsy on the 52-year-old Pushkar, a day after she was found dead in Hotel Leela.
