Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, Jan 6: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar, found dead in mysterious circumstances here in January last year, was poisoned to death, Delhi Police chief BS Bassi said Tuesday. “We have got the final medical report from AIIMS, and we have been told that it was an unnatural death,” Bassi told the media.
“She died due to poisoning. If the poison was given orally or injected into her body is being investigated,” he said, adding the report from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences was received December 29.
Bassi said the quantum of poison given to Pushkar, who was 52, had not yet been ascertained. “For that we will send her viscera abroad.” A murder case has been registered, the police chief said.
A special team has been formed to probe the case. This will be overseen by Deputy Commissioner of Police Prem Nath.
Asked why it took almost a year for the final medical report to come, Bassi said the interim report spoke of poisoning but did not say it was an unnatural death. “Even overdose (of medicines) can be poisoning.”
When IANS sought to know if Tharoor, a former Union minister and now a Congress MP from Kerala, would be questioned again, he said: “We will do whatever is possible.”
Bassi said Delhi Police had sought the final medical report from AIIMS several times. “Now that we have got it, we are registering an FIR.”
Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel January 17, 2014, a day after she and Tharoor checked in because their house was allegedly getting painted. Both had been married twice earlier.
Tharoor was then the minister of state for human resource development in the Manmohan Singh government.
