1/17/2015 ww w .outlookindia.com | Man In The Shadow http://w ww.outlookindia.com/printarti cle.aspx ?293080 1/4 They were a coupl e beautifully turned out, from cocktail party to book launch, tweeting bits of a life they tried to... National/ Cover Stories MAGAZINE | JAN 19, 2015 Post-mortemSunanda’s body being loaded on to the ambulance SUNANDA DEATH Man In The Shadow Read murder for ‘s udden, unnatural’ death. The Sunanda Pushkar saga is not buried yet . SABA NAQVI The mirr or has crack ed from side to side for Shashi Tharoo r, that s uav e writer, diplomat, politician known for f licking back his hair and talking in a polis hed accent. He has walked, talked and tweeted his way out of many s candals and ev en a few scams in t he past. But the strange case of the death of his third wife Sunanda Pushkar exactly a year ago seems set to stalk him. The dead do tell some tales, it seems. Now the police is acting on an autopsy report that suggests possible traces of a lethal poison called Polonium-21 0 in her body. After a great deal of confusion, we now know a year af ter the death that it’s not sparkling cy anide or a fit of rag e that killed her but perhap s a poison we’v e heard of only in high-profile international murders. The case has certainly moved into the zone of mys teries that otherwise inhabit the world of fiction. It is Agatha Christieland out there in the c ase that swirls around Thar oor: beautifu l women, dead beautifu l woman, body in a lush hotel, a famous husband (him), suggestions of scandal and personal indiscretions, untraceable poison. This correspondent had exactly two encounters with the once-famous couple—Shashi and Sunanda—who wa lked hand in hand s miling and being photographed. It was after the famous marriage in 2010, when Page 3 was being decorated with photographs of the two. They walked in like a teenage couple in lov e to a winter lunch hosted by then Union minister Salman Khurshid and his wife Lou ise. There were many notables present that day on t he Lutyens bungalow law ns but all ey es were on the lady, who sported a cowgirl look, with k nee-high bo ots and a c heck shirt. S he was charming, warm, gushing, pulling her husban d’s arm, jaan come here, jaan let’s go there. Constantly searching out one another, they were definitely a novelty in the world of staid middle-class couples, let alone politicians who would nev er dream of making a public display of spousal affe ction. Meeting number two took place at the residence of the French ambassador in Delhi in 2012, where this correspondent was on the panel to discuss Tharoor’s latest book, Pax Indica. Tharoor was eloquent as usual. Sunanda sat in the front row, furiously tweeting her husband’s words, minute by minute. At the cock tail afterwa rds, she was quite delighted with his perf ormance. Again, charming, gushing, ve ry anxious t o make an impression, exchange numbers with the guests who were politely trying to not just s tare at her.
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they tried to...
Post-mortem Sunanda’s body being loaded on to the
ambulance
SUNANDA DEATH
Man In The Shadow Read murder for ‘s udden, unnatural’ death. The
Sunanda Pushkar saga is not buried yet.
SABA NAQVI
The mirror has cracked from side to side for Shashi Tharoor, that
suave writer, diplomat, politician known for flicking back his hair
and talking in a polished accent. He has walked, talked and tweeted
his way out of many scandals and even a few scams in the past. But
the strange case of the death of his third wife Sunanda Pushkar
exactly a year ago seems set to stalk him. The dead do tell some
tales, it seems. Now the police is acting on an autopsy report that
suggests possible traces of a lethal poison called Polonium-210 in
her body. After a great deal of confusion, we now know a year after
the death that it’s not sparkling cyanide or a fit of rage that
killed her but perhaps a poison we’ve heard of only in high-profile
international murders. The case has certainly moved into the zone
of mys teries that otherwise inhabit the world of fiction. It is
Agatha Christieland out there in the case that swirls around
Tharoor: beautiful women, dead beautiful woman, body in a lush
hotel, a famous husband (him), suggestions of scandal and personal
indiscretions, untraceable poison.
This correspondent had exactly two encounters with the once-famous
couple—Shashi and Sunanda—who walked hand in hand smiling and being
photographed. It was after the famous marriage in 2010, when Page 3
was being decorated with photographs of the two. They walked in
like a teenage couple in love to a winter lunch hosted by then
Union minister Salman Khurshid and his wife Louise. There were many
notables present that day on the Lutyens bungalow lawns but all
eyes were on the lady, who sported a cowgirl look, with knee-high
boots and a check shirt. She was charming, warm, gushing, pulling
her husband’s arm, jaan come here, jaan let’s go there. Constantly
searching out one another, they were definitely a novelty in the
world of staid middle-class couples, let alone politicians who
would never dream of making a public display of spousal
affection.
Meeting number two took place at the residence of the French
ambassador in Delhi in 2012, where this correspondent was on the
panel to discuss Tharoor’s latest book, Pax Indica. Tharoor was
eloquent as usual. Sunanda sat in the front row, furiously tweeting
her husband’s
midst of high drama
soon.
Hyderabad ire Protest against Tharoor, Lalit Modi over
IPL
That’s how the couple lived for the four highly publicised years of
their marriage: beautifully turned out, from cocktail party to book
launch, tweeting away nuggets of a life they tried to variously
project as glamorous, meaningful, beautiful, happening and
surrounded by the halo of true love. Indeed, Shashi would in his
book dedication describe Sunanda as the greatest love of his life.
The Sunanda-Shashi story truly is a fit case for the use of
cliches—life would be stranger than fiction, cocktail season would
turn into a morbid cocktail and what have you. Given the k ind of
hysterics that preceded Sunanda’s death in a seven-star hotel, one
can indeed say that it was a long hangover, the crash after the
party has pooped, a mercurial change that happens when people seek
great highs after which they hit the lows.
That day too, on January 17, 2014, this correspondent had sighted
Shashi Tharoor at the AICC sess ion in Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium.
He was smiling, nodding at a few journalists, and seen walking over
to greet Sonia Gandhi. He did not look like a man who was in the
midst of high drama on the personal front (if there is indeed any
such reliable look) or knew that his wife would be dead soon. But
if this was actually a Christie murder mystery, one could say he
was setting up the greatest alibi of all: being seen by hundreds of
people at a public event in Delhi even as someone was possibly
injecting Polonium-210 into his wife. According to Tharoor’s
version of events, he would return to the hotel after the
AICC meet and find Sunanda dead.
This is how the sequence of events leading up to the fateful day
goes: Tharoor had struck up a friendship with Pakistani journalist
Mehr Tarar. Sunanda suspected him of having an affair and confided
to friends and suggested in interviews that she would expose him
and blow the lid. They boarded a flight from Thiruvananthapuram to
Delhi on January 15 and fought all the way through in the aircraft
and at Delhi airport
(Tharoor was then minister of state in the HRD ministry). Then
I&B minister Manish Tewari was also a witness to the mid-air
fracas as were other passengers.
Full circle Tw eeted pic on travelling “cattle class”, doing
his bit f or Sw achh Bharat and w ith Sonia Gandhi at an iftaar
party
In Delhi, a distraught and hysterical Sunanda refused to go home
and checked into the Leela hotel. Tharoor has also admitted to
investigators that there were a few “scuffles” between him and his
wife. They were apparently fighting non-stop for three days.
Tharoor followed her into the hotel the next day and they again
proceeded to fight through the night apparently. In the morning, he
left for the AICC session; she went to sleep. At some point, she
died or was k illed. This was the sad end to t he woman Narendra
Modi had described as the “50 crore girlfriend”. Tharoor had then
responded that Sunanda was “priceless”. It was a very smart
response then.
What was not so smart in hindsight is the pressure Tharoor
reportedly sought to bring on the forensic laboratory at aiims.
This is where Crime Scene Investigation meets Agatha Christie.
According to the head of the forensic unit Sudhir Gupta ( see
interview ), political pressure was brought on him to declare
the death as a natural one after he had indicated “unnatural and
sudden death” in his first report. Gupta was not willing to go
along, hence was sidelined and Sunanda speedily cremated. Before
that, however, the viscera (body tissue) was kept in preservative
and detailed photographs taken of the injuries on her body that
included bite marks and needle punctures. Now, Gupta has been
rehabilitated and the police is acting on the presumption that
Sunanda was poisoned.
before the former’s death, sources say more than one woman has
fought and gotten hysterical over Tharoor. There is a tale
involving a Kerala- based actress he was involved with before he
moved on to Sunanda. Apparently, she was so fiercely jealous that
she tried to stop an attractive woman MP from Mumbai from going to
his room for a professional purpose. The MP would later apparently
complain to president Sonia Gandhi. Then, during his days as a UN
diplomat, Tharoor had got involved with the wife of an Indian
ambassador that culminated in the couple getting a divorce. There
is no moral judgement to be made on Tharoor’s life, and many
brilliant men have a great appetite for women. But all this assumes
relevance because his late third wife was apparently hysterical
because of this.
In Kerala, the joke is that political opponents are more afraid of
Tharoor’s ability to charm women than any other accomplishment of
his. One rival party that was putting up a candidate against him in
Thiruvananthapuram apparently denied a t icket to a beautiful lady
candidate because they feared that instead of fighting Tharoor she
would fall for him! The ticket went to a relatively dull male
candidate who Tharoor defeated by a narrow lead.
Tharoor’s many loves & lives: Mehr Tarar, Sunanda,
Tilottama Mukherjee and Christa Giles
Ever since he became one of the 44 Congress candidates to survive
the Modi onslaught in the 2014 general election, Tharoor has been
trying to flirt not with women but with the BJP. He has said nice
things about Narendra Modi in articles and on Twitter and showed
solidarity with his Swachh Bharat mission. He caught the broom, it
is now being said, not to clean India but to soften the BJP regime
and ensure that any scandal remained firmly swept under the carpet.
The BJP, however, does not seem to be either wooed or
flattered and will possibly view Tharoor as damaged goods. He will
certainly face further investigation at the very least for trying
to tamper with evidence.
Shashi Tharoor, the talented writer, has got lost in all the
scandals, the scams. One of the conspiracy theories doing the
rounds in Delhi
actually links the IPL scam to the death of his wife. The
version, now also appearing in some Hindi dailies, goes something
like this. Sunanda Pushkar was from Dubai where she met Tharoor.
The couple, who once owned an IPL team (that was later removed from
the league), also had other contacts in Dubai. Sunanda had started
to ac t unstable and talk in interviews about revealing some great
secrets . This worried others too, besides being very inconvenient
for Tharoor. Her death therefore was a professional hit by unknown
men who checked into the same hotel where she was staying.
Tharoor, meanwhile, is not a public personality who evokes
sympathy. He is seen as too elitis t, too c lever by half. His
remarks, like the one about flying “cattle c lass”, endeared him to
no one except the thin crust of people who revel in their sense of
privilege, and certainly inappropriate for a politician presuming
to represent the toiling masses of India. As a minister, he once
tried to stay in a five-star hotel and get the government to pick
up his tab (after it became another scandal he found himself a
house). He is perceived as being snooty and way too smooth.
On the flip side, he’s a talented writer, very courteous in his
speech, and one of the current members of the Congress who has both
written and spoken most elegantly about the Nehruvian legacy. It’s
actually a lit tle startling to realise that between writing 14
books and doing well at both fiction and non-fiction, lurching from
cocktail to book event, he also found the time to put out nearly
25,000 tweets (since he joined Twitter in 2009 he has one of
the highest number of followers for an Indian at 2.8 million). At
the time of writing on January 8, he had not tweeted for
three days.
***
A Question Of Answers: Suicide, Murder, Accident Or A
Frame-Up?
Since May 2014, the investigating officer on the case, Atul Sood,
has been transferred; ACP Surinder Sharma, who was supervising the
investigation, retired in September, and the DCP concerned was
shifted to the traffic department
Delhi police is yet to examine or record the statement of BJP
leader Dr Subramanian Swamy by a magistrate. Swamy c laims to have
proof that Sunanda Pushkar was killed but says the needle of
suspicion goes beyond Tharoor.
Delhi Police Commissioner told the media that a case for
murder was registered because the final report from AIIMS held that
the death was ‘homicidal’ in nature. The forensic sc ience
department head Dr Sudhir Gupta denies this and told the media that
the report says that death was by poisoning and that it was for the
police to find out if the death was suicidal, homicidal or acc
idental.
The Police holds that it is investigating whether the poison
was administered orally or was injected. (The only way it can be
established is for someone to come forward and testify how it was
administered.)
Police claims that the medical report mentions that the
deceased suffered from no prior disease and had no cardiac problem,
hypertension or tuberculosis. This is contested by a member of the
forensic team, who confirms that she did suffer from Lupus, an
autoimmune disease.
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AIIMS had submitted a revised report in September but Delhi
police was not satisfied; it asked AIIMS to answer some more
questions. Sources in AIIMS claim all the reports submitted by them
on the death so far, four according to one est imate and more
according to others, have reiterated ‘by and large’ the same
findings.
***
The Rise And Slide Of Shashi Tharoor
1956 Born in London to Lily and Chandran Tharoor, an ad
executive for The Statesman, Calcutta
1975 At St Stephen’s College in Delhi, where he did his BA in
History, edits the magazine Kooler Talk
1976 The debater and quizzer wins college elections with the
slogan ‘Shashi Tharoor, jeetega zaroor’
1978 The youngest to complete a PhD in diplomacy from Tufts
University, Massachusetts , begins UN career
1989 Becomes senior officer at UN; publishes his take on the
Mahabharata, The Great Indian Novel
1997 Becomes executive assistant to UN secretary-general Kofi
Annan
2006 Lobbied hard with a reluctant UPA government to back him
as India’s candidate for the top UN post
2007 Becomes president of Afras Ventures, a Dubai firm
promoting foreign investment
2007 Marries UN colleague Christa Giles after split with
Tilottama Mukherjee, with whom he has twins Kanishk and
Ishaan
2009 Enters Indian politics, joins Congress and is elected to
15th Lok Sabha from Thiruvananthapuram
2009 Meets Sunanda Pushkar at a soiree in Dubai hosted by
billionaire businessman of Kerala origin, Sunny Varkey
2009 Stays in a star hotel as minister during “austerity
drive”, saying Kerala House didn’t have a gym or privacy; tweets
pic tures about travelling “cattle class”
2010 Allegedly leans in on external affairs ministry to buy
three books authored by him for distribution in Indian
missions
2010 Calls Saudi Arabia a valuable interlocutor between India
and Pakistan during PM’s visit to Jeddah
2010 Lalit Modi disc loses names of some of the owners of the
Cochin IPL franchise, inc luding Sunanda Pushkar’s 2010 Sends
SMS to Karan Thapar: “I’ve seen your grilling of Farooq, putting
words in his mouth and I’ve just realised what a s**t you
are”
2010 Uproar in Parliament over IPL leads to Tharoor’s
resignation as minister of state for external affairs
2010 Divorces Christa Giles, marries Sunanda Pushkar, backs
P.J. Thomas’s appointment as CVC
2011 Tweets “Amul babies are fit, strong, focused on future”
after Kerala CM calls Rahul Gandhi an “Amul baby”
2011 CAG says Tharoor received $30,000 in Dubai account for
Commonwealth Games “services”
2012 After Modi calls Sunanda a “Rs 50 crore girlfriend”,
Tharoor responds: “Wife Priceless”
2014 Subramanian Swamy alleges Tharoor misused his office to
get Pushkar’s son out of a UAE jail
2014 Sunanda Pushkar in a Twitter blowout with Pakistani
journalist Mehr Tarar, who she alleges is having an affair with
Tharoor
2014 Pushkar and Tharoor issue a joint statement, but she is found
dead the following evening after a series of conversations with TV
journalists through the night
2014 Draws Congress fire for online article ‘How Narendra Modi
may have evolved into Modi 2.0’
2014 Modi nominates Tharoor as one of his ambassadors for
‘Swachh Bharat’ campaign; Congress sacks him as spokesperson
By Saba Naqvi with Minu Ittyipe