This story is from January 18, 2015

ASI fine-tuning reply to Unesco for heritage tag

It has been a year that Sunanda Pushkar was murdered in a hotel room in the capital, but Delhi Police is far from aware as to who killed her or even what killed her for that matter.
ASI fine-tuning reply to Unesco for heritage tag
NEW DELHI: It has been a year that Sunanda Pushkar was murdered in a hotel room in the capital, but Delhi Police is far from aware as to who killed her or even what killed her for that matter.
The case had been lying under wraps till January 1 this year when Delhi Police registered an FIR of murder in the case. However, instead of talking about a breakthrough, sources in the top echelons of Delhi Police told TOI on Saturday that it was heading towards a closure.

This is surprising given that the SIT formed to probe the case has been “extremely secretive” in carrying out so-called interrogations of “crucial” people in the case. Those quizzed include all friends of the couple, hotel staff and people who had had any connection with those who occupied suite number 345 on January 17, 2014.
Officers privy to the investigation refused to elaborate, saying they had been instructed by JCP Vivek Gogia not to talk to the press, but they did say that an announcement in this regard was going to be made very soon.
Police commissioner B S Bassi has been talking of sharing a development “soon and within 3-4 days”. Officers refused to divulge if a decision has already been taken. Till May last year, police were not even bothered to collect exhibits like broken glass pieces and other samples from the hotel room despite being pulled up by the medical board.
By July, the inquest proceedings were heading for a closure when matters began to gather pace. Suddenly, investigators were seen interacting with the forensic officials regularly. The twist came in September when the DCP handling the probe was mysteriously transferred to the traffic department, a significantly lesser important assignment.

ACP Surender Sharma, who had been Gogia’s aide in the Jessica Lall murder case, was the key investigator in this case. He also retired by September-end. The SHO, Atul Sood was shunted out to security wing. The probe team was virtually dismantled with Gogia remaining at the helm.
However, in November, Shashi Tharoor, dropped a bombshell by saying that Delhi Police officers had assaulted his help Narain Singh and were trying to extract a confession from him that he and Tharoor had murdered Sunanda. It came to fore that the investigators had secretly shifted base to RK Puram police station and were interrogating people involved in the case.
On December 29, police received the final medical report, which did not have anything new, and registered a murder FIR in the case. However, sources said this was just a face-saver and that nothing was going to emerge from the investigation.
author
About the Author
Raj Shekhar

Raj Shekhar Jha is an assistant editor with The Times of India, Delhi. He has been writing on internal security and crime for TOI since 2011.

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