Sunanda Pushkar Death Case: Hearing deferred til January 8

Delhi’s Patiala House Court on Monday deferred the hearing in the death case of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, till January 8. BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy has filed a petition seeking to prosecute Tharoor in the case. The former Union minister is accused of abatement to the suicide of his wife in 2014. On January 17, 2014, Pushkar was found dead under mysterious circumstances in her private room of a five-star hotel in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri.

Swamy, who is known to pursue cases against Congress leaders, had sought to assist the court in the case and to bring the Delhi Police’s vigilance report on tampering of evidence on record for framing of additional charges against Tharoor. Earlier in October, the court had directed Delhi police to hand over documents related to case, including the statements of various witnesses, to Shashi Tharoor.

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In the chargesheet filed by Delhi Police in May this year, Tharoor had been charged with aiding and abetting the suicide of his wife. Tharoor has been arrayed as the only accused in the case. In the chargesheet, the police had also alleged that Tharoor subjected his wife Sunanda Pushkar to cruelty.

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.” The police have taken her last emails and social media messages as her dying declaration.

However, the Congress leader termed the police charges "preposterous and baseless" and said that they were the product of "malicious & vindictive campaign" against him.

“It is a motivated prosecution. Let police prove in court if it is a case of suicide. ..Sunanda never said that I did anything against her, never. All these matters are before the court. I am contesting this in court. I want to clear myself before the court," he had said.

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Expressing the pain of losing wife, Tharoor, in an interview with India TV had said that he has not done anything wrong in his life. “I have a clear conscience. I have not done anything wrong. ..I did not slap my two naughty boys even once, even though they sometimes deserved to..I saw my 80-year-old mother weeping on TV. In my entire life, I had promised myself never to go to any police station or court, but this happened,” Tharoor had said.