NEW DELHI: Former Indian minister and former United Nations diplomat Shashi Tharoor may be questioned by Delhi police after they opened a murder investigation against “unknown persons” following the death of his glamorous wife.
Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in her five-star hotel room in the Indian capital in January 2013, after publicly accusing Tharoor of having an extra-marital affair with a Pakistani journalist.
Almost a year after her death, police opened a murder investigation on Tuesday. Tharoaor has not been identified as a suspect.
“Whatever is necessary will be done,” Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi told reporters on Wednesday when asked if the police would interview Tharoor, who has cooperated with investigations since the death.
After an autopsy initially concluded Pushkar probably died of an overdose of anti-depressant drugs, Indian police said on Tuesday that she was poisoned and a case was registered.
Tharoor said he was “stunned” to hear his wife’s death was being investigated as murder, adding that he had never suspected foul play.
“We all want that a comprehensive investigation be conducted and that the unvarnished truth should come out,” he said in a statement. The couple were married in late 2010, the third marriage for each.
As part of Delhi’s social set, they frequently figured in the society pages of newspapers.
Tharoor was a junior education minister at the time of Pushkar’s death. He remains a member of Parliament for the Congress party, which has ruled India for most of the time since the nation gained independence.
In a letter to Bassi in November, Tharoor accused Delhi police officers of attempting to frame him and using physical coercion to try to intimidate his domestic help into “confessing” they had murdered Pushkar together, media reported.
An acclaimed author and prolific user of social media website Twitter, Tharoor was an under-secretary general during Kofi Annan’s leadership of the United Nations.
In 2009, Tharoor won a seat in India’s parliament from the southern state of Kerala and was later appointed the junior foreign minister.
He resigned in 2010 over allegations of corruption in winning a cricket league franchise after Pushkar was allegedly given stakes worth about $15 million for free.
Police may question Tharoor in wife’s murder
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Trial by TV continues in India with vigor and a complete absence of legal protocol. I was watching one talk show last evening and the way it went they might as well have tied Shashi Tharoor to a post, given him a last cigarette and shot him.
Someone was teed off that Tharoor refused to come to the studios or be on a TV show and answer questions following the announcement that his wife was murdered. From my point of view Mr. Tharoor is not duty bound to respond to a commercial TV station's invitation. Certainly not a handful of hours after the authorities have belatedly announced his wife was murdered. To equate his refusal to chat about it with guilt and to slur him with innuendo that he was,somehow, responsible for his wife’s murder seems extravagant and is almost a sort of gleeful visual rubbernecking.
What is most scary is that the ‘truth’ is now coming out because the governments have changed. If police investigations depend on who is in power then that is a bit of stigma and a matter of deep concern. Surely, we cannot be doing the guilt and innocence thing based on politics...or is it of no surprise and it is the way things are?
Equally frightening is the fact that India has no adequate labs for even a poor episode of CSI and has to dispatch viscera a year later to the UK for confirmation of the poison cocktail so used.
There are six poisons mentioned and it is the part that beats my grasp. If we have identified these six poisons then why is there a need to send the samples abroad. And if we haven’t done that where are the six ‘possibles’ coming from and why is polonium and snake venom, heroin and three other deadly elements names that being bandied about. It is hard to believe that all six were administered to Sunanda Pushkar at the same time or at different times. Without being facetious this is overkill. A professional hitman would not beat her and suffocate her, set up the scene then administer multiple poisons. He’d be in and out of there in seconds. And it is not that easy to procure these poisons. You don't go down to your local pharmacy and say, some snake venom please and a tube of polonium.
After the news broke and the massive coverage and opinion that mushroomed into a cloud cover one is most confused. By all means interrogate Mr. Tharoor but don’t damn him for being stunned that his wife was murdered. Being stunned is not an admission of guilt.
Too much holier than thou media exploiting another individual’s discomfort. Shut up till a line is drawn prima facie linking the husband and the manner of death of his wife. Till then if wants to stay off camera so be it.
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