DNA Edit: Tharoor’s Trials

The charge against Congress leader Shashi Tharoor that he actually abetted the suicide of his late wife Sunanda Pushkar is something that should have been investigated much earlier. There were indications that Tharoor and Pushkar had a strained marital relationship and there were also indications that Pushkar was depressed as a result of this.

Witnesses had revealed that Tharoor had frequent altercations with his wife, he hit her on many occasions and he was having an extra-marital affair with a Pakistani journalist. With all these factors, it should have been natural to assume that Tharoor, even if he did not murder his wife, was guilty of driving her to depression. It was also natural to assume that as her husband, he would have been aware of his wife’s medical history. So, the charge of abetting suicide is a natural one to make. The question to be asked is why did the Delhi police not take this up earlier?

Though the police did bring in a charge of murder against the Congress leader after Sunanda was found dead in a suite in a five-state hotel in 2014, the charge of abetment to suicide was not brought forward then. One has to question why and indeed, one needs to ask how and why the probe into Sunanda’s death was conducted in such a lackadaisical manner. In fact, the Delhi court had actually pulled up the police several times on this count, asking them whether they were even taking the investigation seriously.

Perhaps they were not, at the time. But now this new charge sheet may help change that. Tharoor has naturally dismissed the charges against him as ridiculous, but another round of interrogation of people close to Sunanda will help reveal her state of mind over a long period of time and key questions will be cleared up — whether she was depressed before her marriage, did she become depressed after her marriage, and did Tharoor know of her history of depression. These questions should finally determine Tharoor’s exact role in Sunanda’s death.