The Congress came in support of Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor and urged the media to not to sensationalise the Sunanda Pushkar murder case without checking the facts.
Tharoor, under attack from the BJP and the Left, said Delhi police is physically intimidating his domestic help Narayan Singh to make him confess that the two (Singh and Tharoor) killed Pushkar. Delhi police, meanwhile, has constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the case.
Tharoor told Home Minister Rajnath Singh that a police official repeatedly physically assaulted his domestic help.
“I was therefore shocked and appalled to learn that in the course of the 16-hour interrogation conducted by four Delhi police officers on Friday (November 7, 2014) and again during the 14- hour interrogation on Saturday (November 8), my domestic helper Narayan Singh was repeatedly physically assaulted by one of your officers,” he said in the letter.
Tharoor said such conduct is completely unacceptable.
“Worse, the officer used the traumatic physical assault to try and intimidate Narayan into ‘confessing’ that he and I murdered my wife,” he said.
The MP added that it amounts to the use of physical coercion in an attempt to frame an innocent man.
“I would request you to take immediate and appropriate action against such unlawful misconduct of the officer concerned,” he said and urged the Home Minister to look into the matter personally and ensure that the unvarnished truth comes out in this case.
“My family and I are eagerly waiting to see the outcome of the inquiry conducted by the Delhi Police,” Tharoor said in the letter.
Access to report Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi wondered how BJP leader Subramanian Swamy accessed the post-mortem and other reports when even Pushkar’s family could not get a copy of it.
Course of law Singhvi said the law should take its own course in the issue.
“Every person, and I am not talking of anybody in particular, has full right to be treated as completely innocent unless and until a process of laws goes beyond and further and I think we must maintain this sense of balance. It is also most important not to sensationalise it,” he said.
Delhi police had yesterday registered a murder case on Pushkar’s death on the basis of an AIIMS medical report.
The report had concluded that her death, in January 2014, was unnatural and due to poisoning, but nobody has been named a suspect as yet.