Delhi High Court asks police to file status report on Sunanda Pushkar case probe

NEW DELHI: The Delhi High Court today asked the city police to inform it after two weeks the status of the probe into the death of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar.

A bench of Justices G S Sistani and Chander Shekhar said so after Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain submitted that the court can look into the status of the investigation they have carried out so far.

ASG also submitted that the court could talk to senior Delhi police officials involved with the case inside the chamber as there was no laxity on part of the police in investigating the matter.


He claimed that the lag was not at the individual level but due to the delay in getting the scientific reports.

On hearing this, the bench said it was not fair to look into or monitor the investigation, but would "certainly like to know where the investigation stands as of today."

"The incident is of January 2014 and we are in middle of 2017. It's almost over three years but nothing concrete has come as of today," the bench said, adding "certainly it cannot be unending".

"We have no hesitation to look into your report, but it is a bad habit to monitor the probe," it said.

Pushkar was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on the night of January 17, 2014.

The court posted the matter after two weeks and said that by then the ASG himself should look into the status of the investigation.

"If you are with some different report on the development of the probe after two weeks, it's okay. Otherwise we will look into it. Before we get into it, we will wait for two more weeks and see what you have come up with," the bench said.

BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who has filed a plea seeking a court-monitored CBI-led special investigation (SIT) probe into Pushkar's death, said he was not seeking exclusion of Delhi Police from the SIT.