SC questions maintainability of Subramanian Swamy's plea for probe into Sunanda Pushkar's death

The Supreme Court on Monday asked BJP leader Subramanian Swamy to satisfy it on the question of maintainability of his plea for an SIT probe into the death of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar in 2014.

A bench of justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy told Swamy, "Before going into the merits, we need to be satisfied on the maintainability (of the plea)." The court put the matter for consideration after three weeks.

Swamy challenged the October 26, 2017, verdict of the Delhi High Court dismissing his plea for a probe by a court-monitored Special Investigation Team (SIT) into Sunanda's death.

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

Swamy submitted that when the matter relating to the probe into the Indian Premier League (IPL) was going on, the issue of Sunanda's "unnatural death" came to fore.

"It took one year for Delhi Police to lodge an FIR. The autopsy report says it was an unnatural death. The FIR says it was a murder. Nothing has been done," he told the court, adding that he had thereafter moved the high court.

Swamy contended that the FIR said it was an unnatural death based on the post-mortem report. He also asserted that it was a matter of public interest.

On the issue of maintainability, the BJP leader said he had appeared in many cases involving politicians, including former prime minister Manmohan Singh and former Tamil Nadu chief minister the late J Jayalalithaa.