Shashi Tharoor named in Sunanda Pushkar death charges

New Delhi: Delhi Police on Monday filed charges in the death of Sunanda Pushkar and named her widower Shashi Tharoor, a Congress MP, as one of the accused.

The charges were filed in the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections of husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty and abetment of suicide.

Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel room in New Delhi on January 17, 2014.

“These (the marks) seem to have been caused due to scuffle between Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor and her husband Shashi Tharoor as per the statement of their personal attendant Narain Singh. However, this fact is being examined further.”

The chargesheet also says that the brothers and the son of Pushkar have made “no allegations against anyone”.

Pushkar, 51, was found dead in her suite at Leela Hotel in south Delhi, days after she alleged that her husband was having an affair with a Pakistani journalist.

The police have said there was no evidence of murder in Pushkar’s death but she may have been driven to suicide as she had not been eating or even leaving her room days before her death, according to the the chargesheet.

The 62-year-old Congress leader took to Twitter in his defence, saying he had “taken note of the filing of this preposterous chargesheet”.

He said he intended “to contest it vigorously”.

“No one, who knew Sunanda, believes she would ever have committed suicide, let alone abetment on my part.”

He said if that was the “conclusion arrived at after four plus years of investigation” then it “does not speak well of the methods or motivations of Delhi Police”.

“In October 2017, Tharoor said, the law officer made a statement in the Delhi High Court that they have not found anything against anyone and now in six months they say that I have abetted a suicide. Unbelievable!”

Tharoor, according to sources, has been charged under section 306 and 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) – pertaining to abetment to suicide and cruelty to wife which entails a jail term that may extend to 10 years.

 

(IANS)