It seems that Delhi Police is playing it safe and providing a shield to Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s murder case.
Almost a year after Sunanda was found dead in Leela Palace Hotel in Chankyapuri, on January 1, Delhi Police registered an FIR against ‘unknown persons’ alleging she was murdered. On the basis of AIIMS medical report, senior police officers called it a case of homicide poisoning.
On Sunday, at 2 pm, Tharoor returned to the national capital from Kerala where he was undergoing ayurvedic rejuvenation therapy. From IGI airport, Tharoor directly went to his residence in central Delhi’s Lodhi Estate.
Till late evening, Delhi police have neither approached him nor summoned him to join the ‘fresh’ probe. Since Delhi Police have registered the FIR, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by Prem Nath, DCP (south), PS Kushwah, Additional DCP have questioned around a dozen people in connection with the case.
Interestingly, Delhi Police have spared Tharoor from interrogation and didn’t not question him as yet, despite claims that he had tried to ‘influence’ the case. Speaking to Millennium Post, a senior police officer said, “As of now we have no business with him. If we will find it necessary, we will definitely question him but not now.”
In past criminal cases, it is a common practice that Delhi Police intensively quiz the immediate family member of the deceased where there was a foul play whiff. In many cases, even when the suspect (husband/wife) has no role in the case, still they are made to sit in the police station for hours. But in Sunanda’s murder mystery, Tharoor was quizzed only once, last year, by the cops. Since then Delhi Police and Tharoor were in touch via emails.
Another official associated with the probe said that in a couple of days, they will move a “letter rogatory” in a local court under sections of CrPC for sending viscera samples to a foreign lab in the US or UK to get more answers.