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Police botched Sunanda probe

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There were signs of struggle in the room, which was ignored by the police during their investigation. Now the probe is back to where it started.

Published: Sat 16 Jan 2016, 11:00 PM

Updated: Sun 17 Jan 2016, 7:56 AM

What's taking so long for the truth to come out in the Sunanda Puskhar case? The wife of former Indian minister and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor was found dead in a hotel in New Delhi two years ago and the investigation is back to square one. 'Unnatural cause' is the learned opinion after the FBI was roped in to rule out Polonium poisoning as alleged by BJP leader and national baiter-in-chief Subramanian Swamy. But wasn't this mentioned in the post mortem report handed over to the police two years ago? Why didn't the Delhi Police take it seriously then? First they jumped the gun and said she died of natural causes. Her husband and others claimed she was suffering from Lupus and had succumbed to the disease, a theory which was dismissed when sleuths perused her health records.
Swept off course, the probe focused on the suicide angle, which again got investigators nowhere because they found no evidence that Sunanda could do it because she was to call a press conference the next morning with ''startling'' revelations about her husband's alleged role in the Indian Premier League.
Soon suspicion shifted to her husband and members of the household. The couple allegedly quarrelled before she was found dead in the hotel room. There were allegations of an affair and it appeared that all was not well with the two, who were once the toast of the social circuit.
The medical board which conducted the post mortem two years ago has maintained she died because of poisoning - an unnatural cause - which is what the FBI has confirmed to the police.
Why then was the angle not pursued from the start? It is clear the police botched up the case and were influenced by different sources.
There were signs of struggle in the room, which was ignored by the police during their investigation. Now the probe is back to where it started. For Sunanda's family, that's no consolation as justice has been delayed.



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