New Delhi: Hours after AIIMS submitted its final report on the viscera sample of Sunanda Pushkar, Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi, Friday, categorically asserted that the cause of her death was not natural.
A tight-lipped Bassi refused to reveal further details on the ongoing probe into Sunanda's mysterious death at a five-star hotel in the national capital.
“The report is longish. It is an 11-page report and annexures run into 32 pages. We are studying the report. Once we analyse the report we will continue with the investigation,” Bassi said.
“After due examination of the report whatever is required to be done shall be done,” he said.
Importantly, Bassi said the FBI lab report on Sunanda's viscera had ruled out the presence of any radioactive substance but had found the presence of certain chemical elements.
On the report submitted to the Delhi Police by AIIMS, Bassi said, “The report has given certain conclusions...death is not natural, it is unnatural.”
Meanwhile, Sudhir Gupta, head of AIIMS Forensic Science department, said the FBI report also said the death was due to poisoning as was concluded by the AIIMS.
Gupta said FBI has not ruled out completely the presence of radioactive substances in viscera samples. "But due to degraded condition of the viscera samples, they could not read the intensity of the substances."
He said the FBI analysis of stomach, spleen, liver, kidney and urine has endorsed the cause of death saying that "the same poison is present in all the viscera".
In January last year, Delhi Police had registered a case of murder in connection with the death of Sunanda. An AIIMS medical board had found poisoning as reason for her death following which the police had sent her viscera samples to an FBI lab in Washington last year.
There was earlier speculation that Sunanda may have died as a result of poisoning through radioactive substances.
The FBI had sent its report to Delhi Police two months ago. The report said the radiation levels in Sunanda's viscera samples were "within the standard safety norms" besides mentioning other details.
As police could not firm up about cause of the death based on the FBI report, they requested a medical board of AIIMS to analyse the contents of the report.
The AIIMS medical board in its second report submitted to police on September 30 in 2014 had listed substances such as polonium-210, thallium, snake venom, nerium oleander and heroin, which they said to be either undetectable or difficult to detect at Indian laboratories.
The medical board had examined all the injuries on her body out of which 'injury number 10' was termed as a mark caused by the needle of a syringe.
The reports mentioned 12 injury marks on Sunanda's body, including the injection mark on her hand and a teeth bite.
(With Agency inputs)
