Autopsy report submitted, police clean chit for Tharoor
The autopsy report of Union Minister Shashi Tharoor’s late wife Sunanda Pushkar confirms that she died of drug-poisoning. The report was handed over to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate conducting the enquiry into the incident on Monday.
In a late night development, Shashi Tharoor was given a clean chit by the police.
A doctor at the AIIMS who conducted the autopsy said on Monday that the report had been submitted to Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Alok Sharma who is holding the inquest. “The report is with the SDM now and it will reveal all the facts,” said Dr Sudhir Kumar Gupta, Head of Department, Forensic Medicine, AIIMS.
“Drug overdose” which in other words could be called drug poisoning, has been cited as the cause of death in the conclusion by doctors, AIIMS sources said. The report has also recorded over a dozen injury marks on her face and her hands, the sources said but ruled out the injuries being a cause of the fatality.
The SDM, who left the hospital premises after collecting the autopsy report and meeting the Forensic Department Officials and the Director of AIIMS refused to disclose any details, saying: “It is sealed and I am yet to examine it.”
“On this basis I will conclude what the cause of death was and submit a report to the police whether a case is made out or not surrounding the death and whether police should carry out further investigation or not,” said Sharma.
In the post-mortem conducted on Saturday by a three-member team of doctors headed by Gupta, it was revealed that the death of 52-year-old Sunanda in a five star hotel suite was sudden and unnatural.
The presence of alcohol was ruled out in the post-mortem report but it detected the presence of an anti-depressant drug Alprazolam, an overdose of which might have led to her death. Also, an empty strip of a tranquilizer, Alprax, was also recovered from her room on the day she died, said investigators.
Medical experts say that consumption of Alprazolam tablets in large quantities at one time hampers the functioning of the brain and leads to a comatose state.
Meanwhile, Delhi Police scanned the video footage of The leela Palace hotel to verify the movements of Sunanda, as the probe into the mysterious death entered a crucial stage. The footage established that she was last seen on January 16 and she never came out of her room No 345 after that.
Police sources said that the investigators have seized the CCTV footage of the corridor of the floor the suite was on and it has come to the fore that she was last seen in the lobby on January 16 when she came out to attend a phone call. However, after January 16, she never came out of her room. Meanwhile, the South District police on Monday met the experts of the Central Forensic Science laboratory and discussed the toxicological analysis and the complete visco-pathological examination report. Meanwhile, Delhi Police has accessed Sunanda’s Twitter account and read her tweets as well as her comments.