Tharoor denies suicide charges

INDIAN POLICE ACCUSE CONGRESS LEADER OF ABETMENT IN HIS WIFE’S 2014 DEATH

A prominent leader of India’s opposition Con­gress party, Shashi Tharoor, on Monday (14) re­jected police charges against him for abetment in the suicide of his wife in a case that has led to po­litical mudslinging.

Tharoor’s wife, Sunanda Pushkar, was found dead in a Delhi hotel in January 2014, prompting an investigation by city police. Her death came days after she was involved in a row with a Pakistani woman journalist over Twitter.

On Monday, Delhi police said Pushkar’s death was a case of suicide and brought charges against her husband for abetment and cruelty, a police of­ficer said. The officer declined to be identified in line with service rules.

The charge sheet filed in court on Monday listed suicide as the cause of Pushkar’s death, something Tharoor has long rejected. He dismissed the charges and said he would fight them, but did not respond to messages seeking a comment.

“I have taken note of the filing of this preposter­ous charge sheet and intend to contest it vigorously. No one who knew Sunanda believes she would ever have committed suicide, let alone abetment on my part,” Tharoor said on Twitter.

“If this is the conclusion arrived at after more than four years of investigation, it does not speak well of the methods or motivations of the Delhi Police.”

Pushkar was found dead two days after publicly accusing Tharoor, who served as under-secretary-general to Kofi Annan at the UN, of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist.

She had been taking medication for various ill­nesses and early autopsy results suggested she may have overdosed on antidepressants and sleeping pills. But a year later, police said new medical re­ports had led investigators to treat the case as a murder, without naming any suspects.

Tharoor, a former foreign and human resource development minister in the previous Congress party-led government, married Pushkar in late 2010, the third marriage for both of them.

Under Indian law, a magisterial inquiry is auto­matic if a woman dies within seven years of mar­riage. Subramaniam Swamy, a leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, went to court demanding a special investigation into Pushkar’s death.

The Congress party said on Monday it stood by Tharoor and accused its rivals of playing politics.

Tharoor had to resign from his first ministerial post in 2010 after revelations his then-girlfriend Pushkar was awarded a free stake in a new Indian Premier League cricket team.

He had been tipped to replace Annan as UN chief but the post went to Ban Ki-moon in 2007, after which Tharoor returned to India and entered poli­tics as a member of parliament for the southern state of Kerala. (Agencies)