Shashi Tharoor Seeks Protection From Arrest In Sunanda Pushkar's Death

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has appealed to a Delhi court for protection from arrest in the case of his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death in 2014. The former minister has been summoned on Friday by the court, which had said last month there were "sufficient grounds" to proceed against him on charges of cruelty and abetting suicide.

Special Judge Arvind Kumar asked the police to respond to Mr Tharoor's request and is expected to take it up tomorrow.

Sunanda Pushkar, 51, was found dead in her suite at a five-star hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014. 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, 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. We have only requested for protection so that we appear in the court on July 7," said Mr Tharoor's lawyer.

Sunanda Pushkar died two days after accusing her husband on social media of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist. 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."

The charge-sheet quotes a special investigation team as deducing that the Tharoors, who married in 2010, had frequent fights and Mr Tharoor "ignored Sunanda when she was sliding or slipping into depression and she had Alprax."

The probe team also said Mr Tharoor "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.

The police had first claimed that Sunanda Pushkar was poisoned. In January 2015, they had registered a murder case without naming any suspect.

The former union minister has called the charges "preposterous and baseless" and the product of a "malicious and vindictive campaign".