Sunanda Pushkar case: SC seeks police response on Swamy’s plea

New Delhi, Feb 23 (IASNS) The Supreme Court on Friday sought Delhi Police’s response on a plea by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy seeking a court-monitored SIT probe into the death of Sunanda Pushkar — wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.

While issuing notice to the city police, a bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice A.M. Khanwilkar kept open the question on the locus of Rajya Sabha member Swamy (a third party) in the matter.

During the last hearing on January 29, the court had said: "We understand the merit but the question is of maintainability. You have to satisfy the court on categorical findings of the Delhi High Court."

Swamy has approached the top court against the Delhi High Court’s order that dismissed his plea for the court-monitored probe into Pushkar’s death.

On October 26, 2017, the Delhi High Court had dismissed Swamy’s plea while terming it as a "political interest litigation".

The High Court had said it was "unfortunate that court is being used in this manner" and "courts should be careful in not letting the judicial machinery be used by political personalities for their own purposes".

"This is perhaps a textbook example of political interest litigation dressed up as public interest litigation," the High Court bench had remarked while dismissing Swamy’s petition.

It had also said that it was not satisfied that the plea could be entertained as a PIL (Public Interest Litigation).

In his petition before the High Court, Swamy had said there has been constant attempt to block the investigation and alleged that the registration of an FIR took almost a year and nothing has happened after that.

The plea had alleged that "very influential people are involved in the case, leading to attempts to protect them and the matter has faced a lot of unnecessary delay already".

The court had also questioned Swamy for not stating anywhere in his petition that he is a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and that the person against whom he was making the allegation was from the rival Congress.

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.