Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi has reiterated that the details of the forensic report from the lab of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that has virtually ruled out 'polonium poisoning' as the cause of Sunanda Pushkar's death cannot be made public before its submission in the court.
"The report cannot be made public at least till the time we send it to the court," Bassi said on Thursday.
Even as the report was reviewed by a panel of the senior- most police officials, Bassi said the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that has been set up to probe the case has not yet been handed over the report for analysis. "Analysis of the report shall take time and, even after submission in court, it shall only be shared once all the legal issues connected with it have been studied," the top cop said.
Radiation levels in the viscera samples of Sunanda, the wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, were "within the standard safety norms", Delhi Police had said on Wednesday as they shared the findings of the FBI report.
Bassi had said the report from the Washington DC-based laboratory would be soon handed over to a medical board for examination before further action is taken in the case.
Sources in police had said SIT is likely to summon Tharoor again for questioning. They are also likely to seek court's permission to conduct a polygraph test (lie detector test) on the former Union Minister.
Investigators have so far conducted polygraph tests on six people, all prime witnesses in the case, including Tharoor's domestic help Narayan Singh and driver Bajrangi and Sanjay Dewan, a close friend of the couple. Tharoor was not subjected to the test but was questioned.
According to sources, the eight-page FBI report, received via e-mail around nine months after the samples were sent for examination, has named the alleged poison that led to Sunanda's death two years ago.
The viscera samples were sent to the FBI lab in February last to determine the kind of poison that may have killed her after an AIIMS medical board identified poisoning as the reason behind her death but did not mention any specific substance.
Reacting to the development, AIIMS forensic head Sudhir Gupta stuck to his opinion that poisoning was the cause of death. However, he said that the "domain is much more large", when specifically asked whether Polonium-210, a radioactive isotope, had caused Pushkar's death.