Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in a luxury hotel in Delhi in 2014.
A special court in Delhi on July 2, adjourned its verdict on the question of whether charges should be framed against Congress leader and Member of Parliament (MP) Shashi Tharoor in the criminal case concerning the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar. This is the second time that Special Court judge Geetanjali Goel has adjourned the verdict on the issue. Earlier, it was postponed for June 16 and further deferred for July 2. Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a luxury hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014. Delhi police had registered a First Information Report (FIR) on the death. The police had argued that Tharoor, currently an MP from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, should be booked under sections section 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 306 (abatement to suicide), or alternatively, under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). According to the prosecution, Sunanda Pushkar was a healthy person and the cause of the death was due to the consumption of Alprazolam, Bar and Bench reported. The prosecution also argued that Sunanda Pushkar was subjected to mental cruelty by Tharoor on account of several controversies surrounding his alleged extramarital affairs. One of the theories surrounding the cause of death was plutonium poisoning. However, the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lab report in 2015 had said that she didn't die of poisoning from plutonium or any other radioactive substance. Special Public Prosecutor Atul Srivastava, who appeared for the state, in connection to the framing of charges under Section 302 of the IPC, said that the Alprazolam could have been orally administered and added that medical experts had not ruled out the possibility of it being injected to Pushkar either. The prosecutor also argued that the state was doing its best, and urged the court to frame charges against Shashi Tharoor, based on the prima facie existence of a case. Tharoor’s counsel meanwhile, had argued that as per the Central Forensic Science Laboratory report, the drug in question was not found in Pushkar's blood.
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