Tharoor Has Friends In The Party, But I’m Sure Modi Won’t Allow Cover-Up: Swamy

Republic TV spoke to Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy as part of its ongoing coverage of the Sunanda Pushkar case – after it got access to phone tapes from before Pushkar’s death. Swamy had taken this case up suo moto after the incident came to light in 2014 and gone after Lok Sabha member Shashi Tharoor as he believed it was a “misuse of official power”.

In his recent conversation with the channel, Swamy said, “This is not a crime of passion actually... it was a cold-blooded murder... I continue to believe Shashi Tharoor is an accomplice, both before the murder and after the murder.” He added, “Sunanda was a woman scorned... and she wanted to spill it all.”

Swamy further revealed that he feels the murder was “carried out by a supari”. People from Dubai, two of them with UAE passports and two with Pakistani passports, lived in that hotel, he said, and so the hotel itself was complicit.

Especially noteworthy was Swamy’s claim that a joint commissioner of police had taken a bribe from a “very, very, very, very important person in the Congress party to hush it up and declare it as a natural cause death”.

Swamy said he wanted to approach the court on a public interest litigation and get a court-monitored investigation after he saw no progress. “I was told that they were doing it very systematically because he does have supporters in our party... There was support for him, even an attempt to bring him into the party, which, I’m thankful to the Prime Minister, he blocked it after some of us protested.”

At the end of the interview, Swamy said he had faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who would not allow a cover-up in this case.

Responding to Republic TV’s reportage of the case, Tharoor today (9 May) criticised media and asserted that he had nothing to hide in the matter. He said the channel's broadcast was a bid to establish itself, adding that the police have not established anything as yet. “They [the police] have been investigating for last three years and so far have not been able to establish whether any murder has even occurred," he said.