Former Union Minister in Manmohan Singh’s cabinet and sitting MP Shashi Tharoor is back in the news for wrong reasons. Shashi Tharoor has been charged with abetment in the suicide of his wife Sunanda Pushkar in 2014 at a star hotel in Delhi. Mr Tharoor is the only accused in Sunanda’s mysterious death.
The charge-sheet was filed under sections 498 A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code. In 3000 page long charge-sheet filed before before Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh, Delhi police alleged that Shashi Tharoor had treated his wife to cruelty. The charge-sheet has been filed more than 4 years after Sunanda died.
Sunanda’s death was sensational since she died just days after she involved in a verbal war with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar on Twitter over Mehr’s alleged closeness with her husband Shashi Tharoor. Sunanda was found dead in a posh hotel room in Delhi on Jan 17, 2014. Initial probe indicated that Sunanda died due to drug overdose and a strip of the sleeping pills were found in her hotel room.
However, things have changed after Congress was dethroned in 2014 general elections while its rival Narendra Modi-led BJP stormed to power.
Tharoor, who is known as a good orator, public speaker and writer, strongly responded to the chargesheet, that was framed after 4-long years after his wife’s death.
Shashi Tharoor wrote on his micro-blogging page, “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 High Court that they have not found anything against anyone & now in 6 months they say that I have abetted a suicide. unbelievable!”