Today's HT newspaper piece on Sunanda has made my PIL a shoo -in
Nine months later, police findSunanda’s belongings missing
The clothes she was wearing when checking into hotel, footwear, purse aremissing
NEW DELHI November 13, 2014: Nine months after she was found mysteriously dead in a hotel room, the Delhi Policehave woken up to find that some of the personal belongings of Sunanda Pushkar have been missing all this while.
Police sources said they have not found the clothes Sunanda was wearing when she had checked into the hotel. She was found dead on her bed in her night dress. The police also did not find her footwear in the room. Her purse is also missing. It was unlikely that Sunanda, the wife of former Union minister Shashi Tharoor, was not carrying her purse when she checked into the hotel.
The police did find a bag in the room but it only had a few Alprax tablets. They now believe that someone must have removed Sunanda’s belongings.
The police realised this last week when they revisited the crime scene - suite number 345 of the Leela Palace hotel where Sunanda was found dead on January 17. The police team was accompanied by forensic experts from CFSL and members of the AIIMS medical board that had conducted Sunanda’sautopsy.
Earlier, an AIIMS medical board, while submitting its fresh report on the cause of Sunanda’s death, had highlighted the laxity on the part of south Delhi police in terms of collecting evidence.
Following its advice, the police had written to the AIIMS medical board and CFSL, asking their representatives to accompany them during their revisit to the crime scene.
The crime scene investigation, which should have happened much earlier, took place only after the board in its final opinion reiterated its earlier stand that Sunanda had died of poisoning.
A police officer privy to the inquest proceeding said that evidence collection from the crime scene was done by the forensic experts and the entire procedure was videographed. “Since the initial investigation was done by the SDM, we had limited role to play in the matter,” said the police officer.
Throughout the investigation, the top brass of the Delhi Police remained tight-lipped on the probe intoSunanda’s death.
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx