Targeted for no fault: AIIMS official

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) forensic medicine department head Sudhir Gupta has accused the director of the institute of targeting him and seeking his removal.

"For the first time, the head of any department at AIIMS has been targeted by the director of the institute. I have been targeted for no fault of mine. This is absolutely uncalled for. I had written to the union health ministry that I was under tremendous pressure to change the Sunanda Pushkar autopsy report and state the death as natural," Gupta told IANS.

"AIIMS has moved the high court to replace me without any directions from the ministry. I shall appeal against it as and when I get any notice from the court," said Gupta.

AIIMS had moved an application in the Delhi High Court seeking to replace Gupta as the head of the forensic medicine department at the institute and reinstate former department head D.N. Bhardwaj. The court will hear the matter on July 23.

Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, was found dead on January 17, 2014, last year at a city five-star hotel.

Gupta had said that the death was due to "poisoning". He had also written to the chief vigilance commission complaining that he was pressurized by top officials to produce a false report.

In his fresh letter written to Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda, Gupta had alleged a "tacit understanding" between AIIMS director M.C. Misra and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor for making a "tailor made" post-mortem report in the Pushkar case.

"I was asked by Misra to give a post-mortem report of late Sunanda Pushkar as natural death which was contrary to the findings," he said in his letter dated May 28.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police had registered a case of murder in the mysterious death of Sunanda Pushkar and sent her viscera samples to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) laboratory in the US to identify the nature of poison that caused her death.