4 years on, Shashi faces abetment of suicide rap

More than four years after his wife Sunanda Pushkar's mysterious death on January 17, 2014, Kerala's Congress MP Shashi Bhushan Tharoor was on Monday made an accused and charged with cruelty in marriage and abetment of suicide.

The Delhi Police filed the much-delayed chargesheet, which runs into 3,000 pages, in the court of the Metropolitan Magistrate.

Sunanda, who had married the former union minister in 2010, was found dead in a suite of a 5-star hotel here, days after she had publicly accused her husband of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist. She was 52 at the time of her death.

After a reported quarrel on a flight from Kerala, Sunanda, daughter of a late colonel and born in Sopore in Jammu and Kashmir, left Tharoor at Delhi airport and checked into the hotel where she died two days later.

The police had initially claimed she was poisoned and registered a murder case in January 2015, without naming any suspect, but the case took a turn after it interrogated Tharoor.

The police now say they have no proof of murder but it was evident Sunanda had been driven to suicide; she had not been eating or even leaving her hotel room, the charge-sheet reportedly says. Police sources said the couple fought frequently and Sunanda had been taking depression pills without prescription.

The case got all charged up when the government at the Centre changed from Congress-led UPA to BJPled NDA. BJP MP Subramanian Swamy had been relentlessly pursuing the case with a couple of TV channels giving it disproportionate coverage.

Responding to the charges, Tharoor tweeted that he has taken note of "the filing of this preposterous charge sheet" and intends to contest it. ‘‘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+ years of investigation... It does not speak well of the methods or motivations of the Delhi Police. In October 17, the Law Officer made a statement in the Delhi High Court that they have not found anything against anyone and now in 6 months they say that I have abetted a suicide. Unbelievable," tweeted Tharoor.

The Congress party also tweeted in support of Tharoor and said that the party "denounces this politically motivated charge sheet against him." The Patiala House Court will hear the matter on May 24. Incidentally, Tharoor is the only suspect to be named in the chargesheet. He is the incumbent MP from Thiruvananthapuram.