One must fervently hope that Delhi Police’s re-investigation establishes the truth
Delhi Police's decision to re-open investigations into the mysterious death of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar, should be welcomed. There have been far too many speculations floating around, vitiating the case and raising questions on individual integrity. Although it is now more than three years since her sudden death and a probe had been initiated by the police, the case has not been resolved. The need for re-opening the matter is based on two reasons. The first is that Delhi Police had handled the issue with less than due diligence and with a mitigated sense of professionalism in the aftermath of the tragic incident. leads were allegedly not followed up to their logical conclusion, evidences were supposedly downplayed, and there were whispers that the police was going soft.
A section of the media recently accessed internal communications of Delhi Police which show that even within the force there was unease over the way the investigation was being conducted. Commissioner of Delhi Police Amulya Patnaik has instituted a four-member team to re-look into the issue, and in itself this decision is indicative of the police's resolve to settle the matter once and for all. It should be remembered that quite a few officers who were probing the case soon after the incident, had been removed from the inquiry team. Nobody quite knows why, but it had added fuel to fire and strengthened suspicion that there was somebody powerful out there who didn't want the truth to be known. Delhi Police already has enough material to re-open the case; all it needs is to pursue them with utmost sincerity and in a non-partisan manner. Of course, since the probe is to begin from scratch, there would be evidences that had either been overlooked earlier or not considered valuable enough. It may be recalled that even forensic evidence provided by a reputed doctor attached to one of the country's most reputed medical institutes, had been brushed aside. Instead, this doctor had been hounded and — according to his own admission — pressured to water down his statement. Thus, there is not just a medico-legal dimension to the case, but also political.
The second reason why a fresh probe was needed is to settle personal culpability. It does no person in public life any good to be dragged endlessly into controversies of the kind the murder case at hand has generated. Shashi Tharoor has been facing this torment for three years now, though it must be acknowledged that his defence has been less than convincing. Nobody's suggesting that he had a role in the death. But there have been discrepancies in his various statements and he will have to reconcile those remarks. The general impression soon after Sunanda Pushkar's death was that the Member of Parliament had been treated with kid gloves by Delhi Police, given that he was an important member of the ruling party then. But now Delhi Police should not feel shackled in probing the case in a professional manner, and must get to the bottom. Indeed, ‘truth' is the keyword, and both Delhi Police and Tharoor ought to be committed to such an outcome. One hopes Delhi Police will not bungle again.
