The Delhi Police on Monday informed the Delhi’s Patiala House court that Sunanda Pushkar had expressed her desire to end her life in her last email sent to Congress Lok Sabha member and husband Shashi Tharoor.
“There was sufficient evidence to proceed against Tharoor,” Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal.
Shrivastava informed the court that Pushkar was depressed and, in an email, written to Tharoor on 8 January 2014, she had expressed her desire to die.
“I have no will to live. All I pray for is death,” prosecutor Shrivastava read the relevant line of the email. Furthermore, he told the court that the cause of her death was ‘poisoning,’ quoted India.com.
The court has set 5 June to deliver its order, after hearing the submission, on accepting the charge-sheet against the Congress MLA.
The charge-sheet quotes a special investigation team as stating that Shashi Tharoor “as a husband ignored Sunanda when she was sliding or slipping into depression and she had Alprax.” They had frequent fights, it says, and “though injury marks were not serious, they are consistent with claims that the couple fought.” She had also been taking anti-depressants, reported NDTV.
“He ignored her calls and disconnected her calls in the days before her death,” the special probe team found.
Sunanda Pushkar used social media to reach him, but those messages were also ignored, says the charge-sheet.
Earlier on 14 May, the Delhi Police had filed the charge-sheet against Tharoor in the Sunanda Pushkar death case under section 498 A (cruelty in a marriage) and section 306 (abetment to suicide), which entails a jail term that could extend up to 10 years. The charges were filed in the court of Metropolitan Magistrate Dharmender Singh.
Tharoor though, had denied all the allegations leveled against him in the charge-sheet and called it ‘unbelievable’. Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, Tharoor wrote, “I have taken note of the filing of this preposterous charge sheet and intend to contest it vigorously. 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+ yrs of investigation it does not speak well of the methods or motivations of the Delhi Police. In Oct 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!,” Tharoor added.
