AIIMS board expresses grave concern over probe

The AIIMS medical board has expressed “grave concern” over the investigation into the Sunanda Pushkar case saying it raises serious medical and legal apprehension and called for appropriate legal remedial measures to be instituted.

In its opinion on the FBI report which had said that the samples provided to them were of low volume and degraded, the board was of the view that the case may have led to a complete “botched-up scenario” had the FBI not been consulted.

In its report, FBI stated that due to limited volume and generally degraded nature of the biological specimen submitted, “quantitation” of the identified drugs was not performed.

“The sample was received with low volume, high viscosity and was degraded. Consequently, in order to affect any analyses the sample was diluted with five millilitres of laboratory grade deionised water. This dilution of the sample raised the limits of detection for all analyses performed on item 11 (blood samples),” said the FBI report received by Delhi Police.

Referring to the aforementioned claims, the AIIMS medical board said, “This is a grave issue of concern for our legal investigation system... which raises serious medical and legal apprehension about the quality of forensic lab report, supervision of legal investigation and custody of biological evidence in cases of death investigation.