Saturday, January 25, 2014

Sunanda Pushkar and the Indian Political Elite: Tweets of a Death Foretold

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of the Union Minister for Education, Dr Sashi Tharoor, was found dead in a holel room in New Delhi on January 17th 2014. The events preceding her death are extremely important. Apparently she discovered an Affair between Tharoor and a Pakistani woman, Mehr Tarar. Tharoor had saved the name of this woman on his mobile under the gender bending name of Harish. On the flight from Trivandrum to New Delhi this couple had a public spat after which she took her husband's mobile and made public the emails between the woman in Pakistan and Tharoor. Inn her last and final tweet she made a threat which her death a few hours later can be interpreted in different ways: I have taken the blame for this man's IPL crimes  and I am not willing to take anything "lying down"/ In the same tweet she discloses that Mehr Tarar was an ISI agent.

The reference to the IPL could trigger the memory of the scandal in 2010 when the Kochi Tusker IPL franchise was allotted to Sunanda Pushkar as "sweat equity". This scandal came to light because Lalit Modi, the IPL honcho tweeted about it and Tharoor was forced to quit his post as the MoS for External Affairs. Soon thereafter the two married and Sunanda Pushkar shifted to Delhi from Dubai. This woman has been quite unfortunate in the men she chose to have in her life. She divorced her first husband within week of her marriage and married his friend Sajith Menon who was the father of her 21 year old son, Shiv Menon. She then married Sahshi Tharoor who is close to the record of Henry VIII as far as matrimonial statistics is concerned. The relationship fell apart under the twin strains of Tharoor's serial infidelity and the stressses and strains of being a Miniter in a fractious UPA regime. In fact on the day she dies, her husband was attedning the special AICC Session in which Rahul Gandhi was all but nominated for the post of PM in the unlikely event of the dynastic fascists coming to power.

The Police investigation was certainly full of unexpected surprises. Though the Family of Tahroor and Sunanda were both interested in floating the theory that the lady died due to a fatal mixture of "wrong medication, stress and exhaustion". the autopsy revealed that her death was caused by poisoning.  And the examination of the viscera has also more or less confirmed that she died due to induced poisoning. And to make matters worse, the autopsy revealed injury marks all over the body of Sunanda, evidence of either domestic violence or a scuffle with her killers.  The Indian Media jhas been very lukewarm in the way this crime was handled. Taroor enjoys a good rapport with the English speaking media because he is said to be a noted writer, scholar and an internationally acclaimed diplomat. While the petty affair of the woman who was being protected on the request of her father by the Gujarat Police resulted in the Congress regime trying to embarrass the Hon'ble Chief Minister of Gujarat by ordering a Judicial Inquiry, there is no attempt to find the truth of the death of Sunanda. It is entirely another matter that the Government of India could not find even a single judge to head the Inquiry it ordered.

There are a number of unanswered questions:
1, What do the injury marks on her body indicate?
2  Is there any truth in the allegation made by Sunanda that Mehr Tarar is an ISI agent
3. Why was the woman who was obviously ill left alone and unsupervised in a hotel room>
4  Why is the family keen to stop the Investigation and close the case as an "accidental death".

The people of Trivandrum voted for Tharoor and he has brought only scandal and shame upon them. Hopefully next time around they will atone for their mistake.

3 comments:

Wordcraft and Statecraft said...

The questions I had flagged in this blog turn out to be true as per Dr Gupta's testimony.

Wordcraft and Statecraft said...

Now what I predicted in this blog has been confirmed.

Wordcraft and Statecraft said...

The IPL angle that I had raised in this blog is now gaining traction.