Congress leader Shashi Tharoor will face trial in wife Sunanda Pushkar’s death case as an accused, a Delhi court said on Tuesday. The court summoned Tharoor and asked him to appear before it on July 7.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal said that there were sufficient grounds to proceed against Tharoor for the commission of offences in the case.
The court’s order came after the Delhi police on May 14 filed a nearly 3,000-page charge sheet, naming Tharoor as the only accused in the case.
The police accused Tharoor, a Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, of abetting the suicide of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, who was found dead in a Delhi hotel on January 17, 2014.
The Congress leader has been charged under sections 498 A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.
According to the police, Pushkar had sent an email to her husband on January 8, nine days before her death. She had written, "I have no desire to live...all I pray for is death."Â The police have taken her last emails and social media messages as her dying declaration.
Tharoor terms charges "preposterous and baseless"
Reacting to the court's order, Tharoor termed the police charges "preposterous and baseless" and said that they were the product of "malicious & vindictive campaign" against him.
In a press note released on his Twitter handle, the Congress parliamentarian said that he will continue to cooperate with the investigators as he believes that the truth will prevail through the judicial system.
Read Shashi Tharoor's full statement here:
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