Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, the wife of Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in a luxury hotel in South Delhi on Friday night.
Sunanda’s body was found around 8.30 pm from room Number 345 of Hotel leela in Chanakyapuri. Police officials said that prima facie it appears to be a case of natural death since no external injury marks have been found on the body. Sunanda had checked into the hotel with her husband on Wednesday evening. Police sources said that they have recovered some papers, but no one has confirmed that it’s a suicide note.
Tharoor had reached the hotel at 8 pm on Friday evening with his staff, including his Personal Assistant, after attending a crucial AICC meeting and a university programme. He entered the suite and sat in the drawing room while Sunanda was in the bedroom. When Tharoor checked on her he thought she was asleep. However, after about half an hour he went to wake her up for dinner but was unable to do so. “Sunanda was lying motionless in her night clothes with the quilt over her. Tharoor’s PA informed me and I called the police who rushed to the hotel. Meanwhile, the doctors at the hotel had examined her and found that rigor mortis had already set in, which means that she had died approximately four hours before her body could be discovered,” said Abhinav Kumar, Personal Secretary of the Union Minister of State for HRD.
A probe into the high-profile case has been ordered by the SDM, since their marriage was less than seven years old. The Central Forensic Scientific lab team was rushed to the scene and police are also scanning the CCTV footage outside the room to see who the last person to enter the room was. Police have also asked the hotel staff to give them the list of the food that Sunanda ordered from the hotel during the day. She was said to be sick from the time she had checked into the hotel and there was an attendant posted outside the suite throughout the day.
Kumar said that Tharoor and his wife had returned from Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday. There too Sunanda had reportedly fallen ill and was hospitalised for three days. The couple checked into the hotel on returning to Delhi since their official residence was being renovated and Sunanda was allergic to dust. The couple was slated to check out on Saturday.
Delhi Police is investigating this incident from many angles. Police officers said they were investigating whether Sunanda died of a cardiac arrest or if she had consumed some poisonous substance. The family’s close friend and popular socialite Suhel Seth gave a statement to a news channel that Sunanda, who married Tharoor in August 2010, was suffering from a life-threatening disease and was on medication. “This is not the time to score political points over Tharoor’s personal loss but to extend condolences to the family.”
He said that Tharoor was supposed to join him at the Jaipur literature Festival to launch a book. Significantly, Sunanda’s death comes two days after she was involved in a bitter public feud on the social media with a Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar who she accused of trying to break up her marriage. A scandal erupted on Wednesday after Tweets posted on Tharoor’s account reportedly spoke of his love for the Pakistani journalist who denied she was having an affair with the Indian Minister.
Sunanda initially threatened to divorce Tharoor, who then Tweeted that his Twitter account had been hacked and would be offline for some time. But a furious Sunanda told a newspaper that Mehr could be a Pakistani spy and that she was stalking Tharoor. “And you know how men are. He is flattered by the attention.” “I will not allow this to be done to me. I just can’t tolerate this. I have nothing more to say,” she told the Economic Times.
Mehr threatened to file a defamation suit against Sunanda for calling her a Pakistani Intelligence agent. She also trashed Sunanda, saying her conduct was “nauseous”. However, on Thursday, Tharoor and Sunanda issued a joint statement saying they were distressed by an “unseemly controversy” over some “unauthorized tweets” posted from their Twitter accounts and that both were “happily married and intend to remain that way”.
The statement claimed that “distorted accounts” of comments “allegedly made by Sunanda”, alleging an affair between her husband and the Pakistani journalist, had “led to some erroneous conclusions”. “We wish to stress that we are happily married and intend to remain that way.”