Sunanda Pushkar murder case: Polygraph test conducted on six Tharoor aides

Sunanda Pushkar and Shashi Tharoor.
Sunanda Pushkar and Shashi Tharoor.

New Delhi, June 22 (IANS) Delhi Police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT), which is probing the murder of Sunanda Pushkar [who was a Canadian citizen], has conducted a polygraph or lie detector test on six people closely associated with her husband and former union minister Shashi Tharoor, Commissioner of Police B.S. Bassi said on Monday.
Police sources said the test was conducted on Tharoor’s domestic help Narayan Singh, his driver Bajrangi and his friend Sanjay Dewan.
This was done after metropolitan magistrate Sunil Kumar Sharma, during in-camera proceedings on May 20, allowed police to conduct the polygraph test on the three people after their consent.
Three other people – S.K. Sharma, Vikas Ahlawat and Sunil Takru – have also undergone the lie detector test in connection with the case.
“Our investigation is continuing. During investigation, whatever needs to be done will be done. So far, we have already carried out polygraph test on six people. If there is any requirement, we will conduct further tests,” Bassi told the media here.
“Till the time we conclude our investigation, whatever is required will be done. The reports of the tests have not come yet,” he added.
The sources said the test was conducted in the presence of the suspects’ lawyers.
Police had earlier questioned these six people.
During the polygraph test, over 100 questions related to some crucial facts, including injuries on Pushkar’s body, were asked.
All the suspects were asked about Tharoor’s relationship with Pushkar and Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar.
“During the polygraph test, all the suspects also faced questions related to the IPL controversy, the couple’s trip to Dubai, and the constant fights between them,” a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Officers privy to the investigation said all the suspects were also asked about the couple’s fight a day prior to Sunanda’s death.
The messages recovered from Sunanda Pushkar’s mobile phone were also part of the questions, said the officer.
Pushkar, who married Tharoor in 2010, was found dead under mysterious circumstances inside a room at the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014. Police registered a murder case on January 1, 2015.
Prior to her death, Pushkar was embroiled in a spat with Pakistani journalist Tarar, whom she accused of stalking her husband.

 

VOICE adds:

 

LAST year, the Toronto Star report said that Pushkar was a Canadian citizen who moved to Toronto in 1999 with her son, but her stay was “a bit of a mystery.”

Pushkar is said to have moved to Toronto with her son Shiv (from her second marriage) from Dubai with a banker of Pakistani origin reportedly after financial losses. Her second husband returned to India where he allegedly committed suicide in 1997.

Jacob Joseph Puthenparambil, a digital media specialist in Singapore who was chief of staff for Tharoor from early 2009 to June 2010, said that after her husband’s death, her son, who was then 5 or 6, stopped talking because of shock. Pushkar learned that she could get care in Canada for Shiv, who is now an actor living in Mumbai, said the Star.

She told Tehelka, a weekly news magazine in New Delhi, in 2010 that she started life in Canada from scratch, doing odd jobs for some time before getting into the IT sector.

She said that they tied up with companies like Compaq and headhunted in India for them. Then she started working with a San Francisco company called Valley Resources and made good money, enrolling her son in a private school.

She also reportedly worked for Noble House International, a global real estate company. In 2004, a company called Best Homes sent her to Dubai to set up its real estate operations.

The Star said that she bought a house for $325,000 in Markham in December 2000, according to property records, and that the house is still in her name.

Pushkar, who first met Tharoor in 2009 in Dubai when he was still married to Christa Giles, a Canadian diplomat he had met at the UN, married him in 2010.