Sunanda Pushkar, 51, was found dead in her suite at a five-star hotel in Delhi in January 2014. (File)
Highlights
- Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has been summoned to court on Friday
- Shashi Tharoor is the only person named as accused in the charge-sheet
- Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in hotel room on January 17, 2014
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has been granted protection from arrest in the case of his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death, for which he has been summoned to court on Friday. The court had last month said there were "sufficient grounds" to proceed against him on charges of cruelty and abetting suicide.
While granting him anticipatory bail, the court said Mr Tharoor can't fly abroad without its permission and has to submit Rs 1 lakh as surety.
Sunanda Pushkar, 51, was found dead in her suite at a five-star hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014, two days after accusing her husband on social media of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist.
Mr Tharoor, say investigators, "ignored her calls and disconnected her calls in the days before her death." Sunanda Pushkar used social media to reach him, but those messages were also ignored, says the charge-sheet.
In one of her emails to Mr Tharoor, said the police, she had written that she had "no desire to live...all I pray for is death."
Her last mails and messages on social media have been taken by the police as her dying declaration.
Mr Tharoor is the only person named as an accused in the 3,000-page charge-sheet.
In his appeal for protection, the politician said the charge-sheet was filed without any arrest. "The law is very clear that if the charge-sheet is filed without arrest, bail is inevitable," said Mr Tharoor's lawyer.
The former union minister has called the charges "preposterous and baseless" and the product of a "malicious and vindictive campaign".