The abiding mystery of Sunanda Pushkar’s murder is getting curiosier in the light of the 11-page report prepared by the four-member medical board of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The medical board while castigating the Central Forensic Sciences laboratory (CFSl) and Forensic Sciences laboratory (FSl) for mishandling the vital viscera samples has also detailed how Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tried to influence them by sending an allegedly bogus medical report of Sunanda.
According to the medical report, Tharoor on January 26 and February 12, 2014, sent emails to AIIMS director, containing opinions of two private doctors Rajiv Bhasin and Anil Gupta from Dubai. “Both the emails are purely subjective and hypothetical without any medical consultation of deceased. Such types of communications are unwarranted in medico-legal death investigation. It may be construed that these emails written after several days of death of Sunanda are desperate effort to mislead the investigation by a doctor who is not a specialist of lupus but merely a child specialist,” the report stated.
Incidentally Dr Anil Gupta was a child specialist practicing at Dubai and was a close family friend of Sunanda. Tharoor wrote, “ Thanks Rajiv. I am forwarding this to the attention of DR Mishra of AIIM through our mutual friend Anil Chatta. I recall your fear that without regular hydration and salt intake she could suffer from recurring episodes of dangerously low blood pressure. Clearly this must have occurred since she was not eating or drinking property for two or three days.”
The report went to add that similar suggestions by email require a legal investigation for the total clarity in the interest of the investigation, truth and justice, since in “sudden and unexpected death double pathology is not a rarity”.
It is learned that a few days before her death, Sunanda was treated in Thiruvananthapuram-based Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) where doctors didn’t diagnose her for lupus.
The medical board also did not rule out any injectable poision in view of injury found on Sunanda’s body in the form of an injection prick mark. The medical board also asked to probe the teeth bite marks on Sunanda’s body.
The medical board also dwelt on the amount of alcohol in the blood of the deceased to allay such theories. “The blood was 1.8 mg which is pharmacological non-significant in postmortem cases and due to postmortem production of alcohol.
Also, they categorically said to a question of Investigating Officer whether she died due to drug overdoseIJ “Death due to combination of drugs is ruled out”, the AIIMS report stated.
“The case is required to be legally investigated thoroughly with all the angles and in the light of three page statement given to SIT by the chairman of medical board about undue influence since the same created legal confusion/stalled investigation in this case for almost two years and raised unnecessary question mark on the professional competence, clinical precision and medical prudence of the medical board of the premier medical institute of this country, which is seen as last hope in medical truth in the eyes of people of this country. Even the Supreme Court on various occasions referred the medical cases to AIIMS”, the board said while putting the Delhi Police and those close to Sunanda in trying to derail the probe.