The mystery surrounding the death of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor, has deepened after a preliminary autopsy report said it was “sudden and unnatural”. The body was also said to have certain injury marks.
Pushkar, 52, was found dead in a five-star hotel suite on Friday night after her husband returned from the All India Congress Committee session. She was cremated on Saturday evening.
The couple is said to have checked into the hotel because their official residence was being painted and fumigated.
A few days before her death, an upset Pushkar had tweeted and spoken to the media about her husband’s alleged affair with a Pakistani journalist. Later, a joint statement by the couple was posted on Facebook, saying all was well with their marriage.
S. Gupta, head of the forensic sciences department at AIIMS, told reporters that the final autopsy report would be ready in the next couple of days, after toxicological analysis and visco-pathological examination reports come in.
He refused to give details of the injuries found on the body, saying that as police were working on the case, certain issues could not be revealed. “Basically, in medico-legal cases, the number of injuries does not matter. Whether these injuries were related to fatality or not matters,” he added.
Meanwhile, certain reports saying that Pushkar was suffering from a ‘grave’ disease were denied by a doctor who treated her in Thiruvananthapuram.
Doctors, led by G. Vijayaraghavan, told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram that she was not suffering from any grave illness, and added that “as is the practice, we are unable to share the details of her illness with the media”.