BJP member Subramanian Swamy on Saturday claimed that the FBI found the presence of heart arrest injectable poison Lidocaine in the body of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of former Union minister and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor. He questioned Delhi Police Chief BS Bassi that why he was silent about the matter and did not reveal it to the media.
Police Commissioner is not telling the media that the FBI found the presence of heart arrest injectable poison lidocaine in Sunanda body.
— Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) January 16, 2016
Sunanda Pushkar, died of poisoning, a report by an All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) panel confirmed on Friday.
The 43-page report, submitted to the Delhi police, also upheld the findings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s forensics report.
In February 2015, the viscera samples were sent to the FBI lab in Washington DC to determine the kind of poison that killed her, following contrary reports from the AIIMS and the Delhi police. They differed over whether she was poisoned or died from an antidepressant overdose.
Delhi police chief BS Bassi told the press that the cause of death was “unnatural”. “The current investigation of the final viscera report submitted to the Delhi police states that Sunanda Pushkar did not die a natural death. That is for certain. It was an unnatural death,” Bassi said.
Pushkar was found dead inside her suite at a five-star hotel here in January 2014, a day after she was involved in a spat with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar on Twitter over the latter’s alleged affair with Tharoor.
The Forensics and Toxicology department at AIIMS, the country’s premier medical facility, said that the cause of death was poisoning, and that there were more than one chemical that had been identified. However, the names of the chemicals were not revealed.
Sources said that the AIIMS report noted that the medical board had given poisoning as the cause of death in the column of opinion after the examination of Puskhar’s body on January 18, 2014.
The FBI was sent samples of the stomach, spleen, liver, kidney and urine. Sources said that their analysis endorsed the cause of death, saying that the same poison was present in all of them. It endorsed the AIIMS post-mortem report.
However, in the report, the FBI also mentioned the presence of a “dangerous chemical,” which maybe the cause of death if “given injectable”. The report also ruled out the theory of ‘polonium poisoning’ having caused her death.
When the Delhi police failed to draw any conclusion on the basis of their findings, the FBI report was handed over to a medical board for examination before proceeding further in the high-profile case.
Investigators have so far conducted polygraph tests on six persons, all prime witnesses in the case, including the Tharoors’ domestic help Narayan Singh, driver Bajrangi and Sanjay Dewan, a close friend of the couple. Tharoor has also been questioned in the case.
In 2014, dna had published exclusive details from the post-mortem report and pointed out that a fresh injection mark on Sunanda’s hand, marked as ‘Injury Number 10’ by doctors, may have caused her death.
Except that one, all injuries on Pushkar’s body “were caused by blunt force, simple in nature.” There were 15 injuries in all, caused 12 hours before her death. Injury Number 12 was caused by a teeth bite.
According to sources, “this raises grave concerns about the quality of investigation, custody and analysis of biological evidences since two Delhi laboratories couldn’t detect the poison which has been clearly mentioned in the post-mortem report which stalled investigations for over more than two years.”