Sunanda had expressed desire to die

New Delhi, May 28: In an email sent to Congress Lok Sabha member and her husband Shashi Tharoor, Sunanda Pushkar had expressed her desire to die, Delhi Police told a court here on Monday, justifying its charges of abetment to suicide and cruelty against the parliamentarian. Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Samar Vishal that there was sufficient evidence to proceed against Tharoor and requested the court to accept the charge-sheet and issue summons to the Lok Sabha member as an accused in the case. The prosecutor informed the court that Pushkar was depressed and, in an email, written on January 8, 2014 to Tharoor, she had expressed her desire to die. “I have no will to live. All I pray for is death,” prosecutor Shrivastava read out the relevant line of the email written by Pushkar to Tharoor. He told the court that Pushkar’s mail and messages in social media had been taken as dying declaration. He told the court that the cause of her death was poisoning. Some 27 tablets of Alprax were found in her room but it is not clear how many she had consumed. The prosecutor cited the post-mortem report which stated that there were injury marks on her body.

Shrivastava also informed the court that Tharoor as a husband ignored Sunanda when she was taking pills to overcome depression. Instead they had frequent fights, the prosecutor said citing witnesses’ statement to substantiate allegations levelled against the Congress leader. The police also disclosed that Tharoor ignored her calls and disconnected them. He told the court the Tharoors married in October 2010. Two days prior to Pushkar’s death, heated arguments were exchanged between them on a flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi. The fight continued at the Delhi airport, the police said. After hearing the submission, the court set June 5 to deliver its order on accepting the charge-sheet against Tharoor. On May 14, the Delhi Police charge-sheeted Tharoor under Sections 306 and 498A of the Indian Penal Code, pertaining to abetment to suicide and cruelty to wife, which entails a jail term that could extend up to 10 years. Pushkar, 51, was found dead in her suite at Leela Hotel in south Delhi on January 17, 2014, days after she alleged that her husband was having an affair with a Pakistani journalist. (IANS)