Sunanda Pushkar.
Pulling up the Delhi Police for not filing the status report in the death of Sunanda Pushkar as per the established procedure, the Delhi High Court has asked it to file an additional status report citing reasons for the delay in investigation. As per procedure, the status report in a criminal case is filed through the standing counsel for the Delhi government. However, police filed the report via the investigating officer (IO). “We have never heard the IO filing status report. In courts, reports are filed only through the counsel. This is your report? Do you stand by it? Tomorrow, we don’t want to hear that you don’t stand by it,” said a bench of Justice G S Sistani and Justice Chander Shekhar to the Central Government Standing Counsel (CGSC) for the Ministry of Home Affairs, and special counsel for Delhi Police, Vinod Diwakar.
The bench also asked the CGSC if he was “satisfied with the status report”, to which he replied in the affirmative. When the bench sought an explanation for the delay, the CGSC said the inquest was conducted by a sub-divisional magistrate for a year, and it was only after the autopsy report revealed poisoning that the FIR was registered. He added that there were four autopsy reports, and that 76 witnesses were examined. Police had also contacted the FBI to find the exact nature of the poison.
The electronic devices which were seized from the hotel room were also sent to experts in the US for testing. All of these resulted in a “lengthy investigation,” he said. The bench, however, said, “Here is someone who expired… It was initially called a suicide, then a homicide. We want to understand… We want specific timeliness in the report.”
Meanwhile, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy said Pushkar’s son, Shiv Menon — a Canadian citizen — had approached the court only after he had filed the PIL. Swamy claimed Menon’s real interest was a property in Canada. Menon’s counsel, however, said Swamy was interested only in “publicity”. The matter has been listed for August 30.
