Amar Singh reiterates IPL angle

Sunanda case

Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Amar Singh on Wednesday stood by his claims that Sunanda Pushkar was depressed before her death and that she had told him about taking the blame for her husband Shashi Tharoor in the Indian Premier League (IPL) controversy.

On Wednesday, Singh said he told the same thing when he was questioned by the Special Investigating Team (SIT) of the Delhi Police which is probing the Sunanda murder case.

“Sunanda was my close friend and I have told the police all that I knew. It is not that I do not wish well for Shashi Tharoor, or I am accusing him,” Singh told mediapersons after his interrogation. Singh was asked 20 questions during the two-hour grilling. However, he refused to divulge the questions to the media. “My statement now is a part of police investigations, I can’t say anything more on the issue. The police will clear the air on the issue,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Delhi Police Commissioner B S Bassi had confirmed that Singh was summoned over information on Sunanda that he shared with the media.

Singh had earlier claimed that Sunanda called him up two days before her death in January 2014 and talked about the IPL controversy involving the now defunct Kochi Tuskers Kerala in which she had a stake. “We are trying to ascertain the facts from Amar Singh,” Bassi said.

Singh had told a TV channel that Sunanda broke down and told him she wanted to reveal information about the IPL mess.

He also said days before Pushkar died, he dined with her, Tharoor and some other friends at Bukhara restaurant in south Delhi’s ITC Maurya Hotel. The group later went to the lounge area of the hotel, where Sunanda and Tharoor were involved in a heated argument. Tharoor then told Sunanda he was going home, but Sunanda refused to accompany him. Singh said that she had told Tharoor she would return home from the hotel with him.

Singh also claimed he was a neighbour of Sunanda and Tharoor in Lodhi Estate. He further added that Sunanda spoke to him for about 40 minutes in the hotel during which she told him that she took the entire blame in the IPL controversy for this “man’s wrongdoing for the sake of my love and affection for him”. Singh,  who has not been in contact with Tharoor since Sunanda’s death, also said despite being politicians, he was more friendly with Sunanda.

In 2010, Tharoor was forced to quit as Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development in the UPA  government after it emerged that Sunanda, whom he had not yet married, was gifted equity worth nearly Rs 70 crore in Kochi Tuskers Kerala.