SHASHI THAROOR CHARGED with ‘abetment to suicide’
NEW DELHI: Four years after Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in suite number 345 of the Leela Hotel, the Delhi Police have filed a charge sheet and named her husband and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor as an accused in the case.
The charge sheet was filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh at the Patiala House court. Police have concluded that it was a case of suicide and not murder. The FIR in the case was filed under section 302 IPC.
Calling the charge sheet against him "preposterous", Tharoor questioned the methods used by Delhi police to probe the case and added that he intends to contest against the charges.
Sources said that in the final police report, Tharoor had been charged under section 306 and 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which pertain to abetment to suicide and cruelty to wife.
Pushkar was found dead in suite number 345 of Leela hotel in south Delhi on January 17, 2014. The suite was sealed that night itself for investigation and de-sealed last month. An FIR under IPC Section 302 (murder) was registered on January 1, 2015, against unknown persons.
In April, the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case told the Supreme Court that a draft final report had been prepared after conducting "thorough professional and scientific investigations" and would be submitted in the concerned trial court after "legal scrutiny".
"The SIT, after conducting thorough professional and scientific investigations, has prepared a draft police report under section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code and sent the same to the prosecution department of Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi for legal scrutiny," it said.
"As soon as the draft police report is received after legal vetting by the prosecution department, the same shall be submitted before the competent trial court for consideration and concomitant judicial proceedings," the affidavit, filed by Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Romil Baaniya who is supervising the SIT probe, had said.
The apex court had ordered a SIT probe following a petition by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy alleging that the Delhi Police was not conducting a proper investigation in the case and the FIR was filed almost one year after the incident.
NEW DELHI: Even as the counting of votes for the Karnataka Assembly elections will be taken up on Tuesday, the Bharatiya Janata Party chief, Amit Shah, on Monday held a meeting here with various State party presidents and workers where he took stock of organisational and political issues as the party gears up for a series of polls, including the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The meeting comes ahead of a convention of the national executives of all the seven ‘morchas' of the party on May 17 with Prime Minister Narendra Modi scheduled to address the gathering and chart out a roadmap for them in the last year of his government's term, a BJP leader said.
During the three-phased meeting, Shah predicted a bigger win in the impending Lok Sabha elections in 2019, than 2014. With the party celebrating the fourth anniversary of Modi government at the Centre, the meeting was meant to draw a strategy for the battle for the throne in the next year.
The meeting started with Shah's addressing where he mentioned that BJP is the largest political parties, having 11 crore members, 330 MPS, and 1,800 MLAS.
He further claimed that other parties are copying BJP'S strategy of the membership campaign. Shah also asserted that not only in the Lok Sabha elections, BJP is heading for a massive majority in Karnataka, so this is a good time to have this meeting. “The Congress ruined their own organisation but we never made that mistake since we are a karyakartadriven party. Today when people say BJP vs all, we like that challenge,” he added during his speech.
“We will most certainly win 2019. People said 2014 was a fluke, but we have won 11 elections and formed 14 governments since then. We want India to be a world leader. We know how to win an election, we know how to run a government and we know how to come back to power,” the BJP chief said further.
“To win the election you only need seven crore votes and in the last general elections, we got 17 crore votes. Till now, the Narendra Modi-led government has done welfare work for more than 50 crore people. Modi government has never done something shameful that bow our heads down.”
“So far tribal leaders and leaders of the backward class have been associated with the regional wing of the party, however this time we are going to see their presence in the central leadership also,” he added.
In addition, during the second and the third phase meetings, various groups were segregated to emphasise on the regional ongoing issues. While addressing the mediapersons here after the meeting party's senior leader Sudhanshu Trivedi mentioned that in the third phase of the meeting the recent victory of the party in the Jharkhand civic poll was discussed and so the ongoing violence during the ongoing Panchayat elections in West Bengal.
The status of many national and regional level party programmes was also discussed. The party officials were asked for their suggestions.
“The importance of social media platform like the Namo applications were discussed. The ‘Raatri Pravas' of the office bearers and central ministers at various corners of the country, were also discussed and the report was being taken by the party president. The party identified 20,000 villages where our representatives worked. The ‘feedback' system has also been started to take the status so the party workers were urged to give suggestions,” Trivedi added.