Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi said here on Wednesday that he had received a letter from Shashi Tharoor, MP, last November that accused the police of trying to frame him in the “murder” of his wife, Sunanda Pushkar.
The letter alleges that a police officer had repeatedly assaulted Mr. Tharoor’s domestic help during interrogation to give a statement that “he and I murdered my wife.”
“I had spoken to my officers about the allegations made in the letter and learnt that even though the person was summoned, he was never tortured,” Mr. Bassi said.
In the letter, Mr. Tharoor reminds the Police Chief that he himself had agreed that the conduct of the officer was “unacceptable and illegal.”
Mr. Bassi, however, said that every aspect of investigation was looked into and if a question was raised, it was taken into consideration.
Meanwhile, while noting that he never recommended it to be a murder, Sudhir K. Gupta, Professor and Head of Forensic Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who headed the panel which conducted the post-mortem on Sunanda, said: “All we have said is that the cause of death is poison.”
Dr. Gupta refused to divulge information on the move by the Delhi Police to register a case of murder against unknown person, nearly a year after the death of Sunanda.
“Police had sought an opinion in the matter and we have already given it. Now, it is for the police to probe further,” he said.
Dr. Gupta said they had taken individual opinions of the Head of the Department of Pathology of a leading hospital in the city.
Sunanda was found dead in a hotel room last year on January 17. The immediate autopsy report stated that her death was due to poisoning. The AIIMS, in its subsequent report sent in September, named a few poisonous substances which could not be detected easily by forensic laboratories in the country and maintained that death was due to poisoning.
“Her viscera are positive for ethyl alcohol, caffeine, acetaminophen [used for relief in pain, fever] and cotinine [chemical found in nicotine],” it said.
