Court summons Shashi Tharoor in Sundanda Pushkar Case on 7th July

Court summons Shashi Tharoor in
Sundanda Pushkar Case on 7th July

New Delhi: Four years after Sunanda Pushkar’s death, a Delhi court on Tuesday, 5^th June 2018 took cognisance of the chargesheet filed by Delhi Police and summoned her husband and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on July 7.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal, while reading out the order, said that "there existed sufficient ground to proceed against Tharoor" on charges of “abetment to suicide" and “cruelty” towards his deceased wife.

"I have gone through chargesheet and documents filed. On the basis of police report I take cognisance for the offence of abetment to suicide punishable under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code and committing cruelty upon late Sunanda Pushkar under Section 498A IPC by Shashi Tharoor," said the judge.

The Delhi Police in its chargesheet, which runs into around 3,000 pages, had alleged that Tharoor had subjected his wife to cruelty. The chargesheet has been filed more than four years after Tharoor’s wife was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a Delhi hotel room.

It concluded that Pushkar killed herself and hence no one has been charged with murder. The chargesheet was filed before the metropolitan magistrate under sections 498 A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.

The chargesheet mentions marital discord as the cause of suicide and says that one party led the other to commit suicide. “Sunanda Pushkar was being harassed for long. Her medical records show she was suffering from depression,” the chargesheet said.


Tharoor had responded to the chargesheet in two tweets, calling it preposterous and said that he would 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,” he wrote.

Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel room on January 17, 2014, days after being embroiled in a Twitter war with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar over the latter’s alleged closeness with Tharoor.