The special investigation team (SIT) constituted by the Delhi Police to investigate the murder of Sunanda Pushkar will be going to Kerala to question her husband and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, sources said on Wednesday.
SIT investigators said their main focus will be on ‘injury mark No. 10’ – an injection wound on Sunanda’s left arm that may have been used to administer poison to murder her. A bite mark on her neck is also of some interest.
Sources said the team may also call in for questioning a CEO of a ‘reputed’ company who had met the couple just hours before Pushkar, 51, was found dead in the hotel room.
But in yet another twist to the case, a letter dated November 13 from Tharoor to Delhi Police commissioner BS Bassi was made public on Wednesday in which the former Congress minister alleged that police officers had tried to implicate him in the case by intimidating his domestic help Narayan Singh.
Tharoor, 58, complained that four officers interrogated Singh for 16 hours on November 7 and for 14 hours on November 8. On both days, Singh was repeatedly physically assaulted by an officer, alleged Tharoor. “Worse, the officer used traumatic physical assault to try and intimidate Narayan into confessing that he and I murdered my wife,” Tharoor said in the letter.
{{/usCountry}}Tharoor, 58, complained that four officers interrogated Singh for 16 hours on November 7 and for 14 hours on November 8. On both days, Singh was repeatedly physically assaulted by an officer, alleged Tharoor. “Worse, the officer used traumatic physical assault to try and intimidate Narayan into confessing that he and I murdered my wife,” Tharoor said in the letter.
{{/usCountry}}Refuting Tharoor’s allegations and claiming there was no pressure to frame anyone in the case, Bassi said, “I received an email with torture allegations, which were looked into but nothing of this sort was reported.”
It is learnt, that Singh’s interrogation revealed that the couple had fought bitterly on the day of the incident.
Though the police have not yet decided, the viscera report may be sent to a foreign laboratory used by the Scotland Yard or the FBI, to identify the poison used for the murder.
This is the second time a Delhi police team is going to the southern state in connection with the case.
“On December 2, a team had been to the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences and met the doctors who had treated Pushkar. From them the officers collected all her case papers and the medicines which were prescribed to her,” said a police source.