In a status report placed in the Delhi High Court on Monday in connection to the Sunanda Pushkar death probe, Delhi Police said they plan to send the mobile phones seized during the investigation to the manufacturers abroad for chip level retrieval of information, which was deleted, since the Indian labs have shown inability to recover them.
The report said the investigation was in an advanced stage and a second meeting of the medical board constituted by Director General of Health Services along with Central Forensic Science lab (CFSl) and Forensic Science lab (FSl) experts was expected to be convened soon. Information provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will be discussed.
Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a five-star hotel in south Delhi on January 17, 2014. Police said that on February 25, 2015 a total of 25 exhibits including mobile phones, hard disk, laptop, pen drives of various people including close friends of Tharoor and Pushkar were sent to the CFSl in the CBI.
“Their results are yet to come. Request to expedite the same is being regularly made through visits, reminders and letters,” the report said.
A request has been made to the DGHS medical board to convene a second meeting to give clarifications “upon the different findings of CFSl and FSl, different opinions given by autopsy board of AIIMS and reports received from the FBI, and to further ascertain the cause of death”.
The report recalled that the first postmortem report of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) of Janury 20, 2014 said the cause of death was “poisoning, the
circumstantial evidence was suggestive Alprazolam poisoning”.
A total of 15 injuries including teeth bite and injection prick marks were found.
Immediately after the receipt of the second opinion of the AIIMS board, mutual legal assistance treaty proceedings were initiated for sending the viscera remnants to an FBI lab in US for examination.
On September 23, 2015, a FBI report regarding chemical analysis of viscera was received. It mentioned that Alprazolam and Hydroxy Chroloquine were detected in viscera organs, whereas Nicotine, Cotinine, Alprazolam, lidocaine and Hydroxy Choloroquine were detected on the clothing of the deceased. Further, Nicotine, Cotinine, Alprazolam and lidocaine were detected on the bed cover and the bed sheet.
In a related development, the Delhi High Court on Monday expressed concern over failure of the police to file a charge sheet in the Sunanda Pushkar case even after three-and-a-half years. The oral observation by a bench of Justices G S Sistani and Chander Shekhar came as it sought response of the Delhi Police and Subramanian Swamy on a plea moved by Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s stepson Shiv Menon seeking his impleadment in the BJP leader’s petition for a court-monitored, CBI-led SIT probe into the death of Pushkar.