It is difficult to convincingly contest the claim that the Delhi police has been dragging its feet mysteriously on the Sunanda Pushkar murder case despite reprimands from the metropolitan court and doubts in the minds of people at large. Exasperated by the delay in de-sealing the hotel room in which the body of the wife of then Union minister Shashi Tharoor was found on January 17, 2014, the court granted time until October 16 to the police to de-seal and hand over the luxury suite to the hotel which has been losing huge amount of money by dint of it being sealed since so long.
This was after an Additional Delhi Commissioner Police submitted that the reports from forensic laboratory were likely to come in a couple of days. The police was on September 12 directed to de-seal the suite and the court allowed the police to take all articles from the room required for its probe, besides filing a compliance report. In this order, the court had noted that a huge financial loss has already been caused to the hotel.
On September 4 too, the court had taken the police to task for its “lethargic attitude” in its probe into the case and summoned the DCP to explain why more time should be granted for de-sealing the suite. Likewise, on August 19, the court had pulled up the agency for delaying the de-sealing of the room and referred to a court order passed on July 21 asking it to do so within four weeks from then. The Delhi police must come clean on the facts that it has gathered in the course of investigation.
If there is a high personage from the erstwhile government or otherwise who has been putting pressure on it for whatever reasons, the police must tell the court without hiding the facts. While much time has elapsed, it may be the best course available even now to hand over the murder case to the CBI in the interests of justice. Those seeking to suppress the truth about the murder of Sunanda Pushkar must be unmasked and punished. Otherwise the impression would spread that the hand of the police was forced by a hidden force that wields a lot of influence and clout.
