New Delhi, May 14 (newsin.asia): A top rung Congress party leader and former Indian minister, Shashi Tharoor, has been charged with abetting the suicide of his wife Sunanda Pushkar in 2014. Tharoor has also been charged with cruelty in his marriage.
But Tharoor described the 3000 page charge sheet as “unbelievable”. The Congress party spokesman said that it is the BJP’s conspiracy to defame Tharoor and that it is nothing but the ruling party’s “revenge machine at work.”
Sunanda (51) was found dead in a suite of a five-star hotel in south Delhi on January 17, 2014, days after she publicly accused her husband of having an affair with Meher Tarar, a well-known Pakistani journalist and one of the editors of Daily Times based in Lahore.
Tharoor reacted to the filing of the chargesheet by the Delhi Police, in two tweets, Tharoor said: “I have taken note of the filing of this preposterous charge sheet &intend to contest it vigorously. No one who knew Sunanda believes she would ever have committed suicide, let alone abetment on my part. If this is conclusion arrived at after 4+ yrs of investigation it does not speak well of the methods or motivations of the Delhi Police. In oct 17, the Law Officer made a statement in the Delhi HighCourt that they have not found anything against anyone & now in 6 months they say that I have abetted a suicide. unbelievable!”
While addressing the media, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said: “We won’t cow down or bow down. This is a conspiracy to defame Shashi Tharoor. We reject the charges totally. This is being done on instructions from the BJP and Narendra Modi-led government. BJP’s revenge factory is at work”.
The former Union Minister and UN Under Secretary General, was questioned by the police on the circumstances in which Sunanda left him at the Delhi airport and checked into the hotel two days before her death. The couple had allegedly had an argument on a flight from Kerala to Delhi.
Police first claimed that Sunanda was poisoned, and registered a murder case in January 2015, without naming any suspect.
Earlier Sunanda had told Indian Express shortly after the minister claimed his Twitter account had been hacked. Controversial tweets were posted from his account and were believed to be addressed to the Pakistan-based journalist.
His purported tweets, however, caused his wife to react to them with tweets of her own. In one of them, she said the Pakistani journalist was stalking her husband.
“I completely stand by my tweets, I 100 per cent stand by that, Sunanda Tharoor later told The Indian Express. “That woman pursued and pursued him.Men are stupid anyways for all you know she is a Pakistani agent. Wheres love, wheres loyalty in this world I am so distraught.”
Sunanda said she felt destroyed as a wife and a woman over her husband’s rip-roaring affair with the Pakistani journalist which she claimed had been going on since April last year.
She also claimed there have been a series of Blackberry Messenger exchanges between her husband and the Pakistani journalist in which, among other things, the possibility of his divorce from her had also been discussed.
Asked what her next move would be, Sunanda had said she would seek divorce from Tharoor.
The Congress minister of state for Human Resource Development and MP from Thiruvananthapuram married the Dubai-based entrepreneur in August 2010.
(Caught between two women:. The featured image at the top shows Shashi Tharoor with Sunanda on the left and Meher Tarar on the right)
