Curious case of the toxicology report: What really happened to Sunanda?

The sudden death of Sunanda Pushkar in a New Delhi hotel, a day after she had accused her husband, then union minister Shashi Tharoor, of being unfaithful is back in the headlines, months after she was cremated in January. From the initial furore to Tharoor’s campaign trail in Kerala – where political rivals accused Tharoor of being a wife-beater and murderer – her death has been dragged into the spotlight again and again. And just when we all thought we could go back to business as usual after the elections, the circumstances of her demise have become fodder for a renewed media frenzy thanks to the Head of Department of Forensic Science and Toxicology at AIIMS, Dr Sudhir Gupta.

Gupta alleges that Tharoor along with the then health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad exerted political pressure to force him to change his autopsy report to say that Sunanda died due to ’natural’ causes. The instant sensation that this revelation caused has now been counter balanced with allegations that Dr Gupta made the claims in an attempt to retain his position as head of the forensic department.

According to Governance Now , Gupta was appointed HoD of the forensic department in 2013, bypassing OP Murthy who was disqualified due to “personal indiscretions”. However, soon after the new All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) director MC Mishra took charge, “Dr Murthy’s disqualification was ignored at AIIMS’s general body meeting to pave way for his (Dr Murthy’s) elevation as the HoD.”

Irrespective of the AIIMS politics at play, there are certain key facts about Sunanda Pushkar’s death that remain unexplained.

For instance, as pointed out in this Hindustan Times report , the initial autopsy by Gupta’s AIIMS team is at odds with findings of the government forensic laboratory (CFSL) which conducted the viscera and toxicology tests. Contrary to the initial autopsy findings, the viscera report ruled out poisoning or drug overdose.

“After the viscera report, Gupta was asked to change the cause of death from unnatural to natural death. However, Gupta did not agree. He wanted to know on what basis CFSL reached that conclusion. But he has not been informed so far. He is willing to change his views if he is convinced by the CFSL findings,” Gupta’s friend Sidharth Mishra said in a CNN-IBN panel discussion on Wednesday.

The police were also puzzled by the conflicting reports. As pointed out in this Times of India story, police had found three strips of Alprax near her body. The Hindustan Times report added that "all but three of the 30-tablet strips of Alprax had been found empty. Further, the forensic report said the medicines had been taken in doses of 2 or 3 tablets at a time"

If so, why did the toxicology report make no mention of the drug? Did she or did she not take them?

_“This means that she consumed 28 tablets but the toxicology test failed to detect them. The report indicates she had been taking them in dosages of one or two. The third possibility is that the strips were plante_d” said the Times of India , quoting a source.

The silence of the police in the matter has also raised some eyebrows.

The Hindustan Times report questions why the police were so quick to rule out filing an FIR  (Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi said in March that circumstantial evidence and statement of witnesses did not warrant such a move) while the Times of India report calls them ‘mute spectators’. Both ask why other ’external injuries’ including bruises and what appeared to be a bite mark on her palm did not warrant any police action either.

According to the Economic Times, the Centre is considering a CBI probe into the death after some of her family members sought such a move and the Delhi Police failed to make any headway in the matter even after five months of investigation.

The report quoted sources as saying that Home Minister Rajnath Singh asked the commissioner to conclude the investigation speedily. In the absence of any breakthrough within a fortnight, the probe may be shifted to the CBI.

“There is a death that raised suspicions. The forensic report has said that it was not a natural death. So the matter should be investigated. Let us not deflect. We are not interested in Gupta’s career,” BJP spokesman Sudanshu Mittal told the CNN-IBN panel on Wesdnesday night.

Meanwhile, AIIMS has come forward to categorically deny Gupta’s allegations and the institution may take action against him. In the meantime, the questions surrounding Pushkar’s death remain unanswered. Will we ever find out what really happened, or is this going to go down as one of India’s most famous  whodunits?