Sunanda Pushkar found dead in Delhi hotel
The wife of Union minister Shashi Tharoor, Sunanda Pushkar, has reportedly been found dead in a five-star hotel in Delhi, The Times of India reports.
Pushkar’s body was found in room number 345 of Leela Hotel. The incident came to fore around local time 8pm after the hotel authorities informed the police.
The special commissioner of police Deepak Mishra confirmed the incident. However police were yet to ascertain if it was a suicide. Further investigations are on. The room in which 52-year -old Pushkar was staying has been sealed by the police.
Pushkar had checked into the five star hotel on Thursday, police said. Sources said she was last seen at local time 3.30pm on Friday in the hotel lobby.
The housekeeping staff apparently knocked on Sunanda’s door at local time 7pm but got no response. The hotel staff allegedly opened the room with another swipe card and found her dead on her bed, sources in south Delhi police said.
The authorities then contacted Shashi Tharoor after which the police were also informed. The police are yet to confirm this sequence of events officially. The police did not confirm if they have recovered a suicide note from the spot.
A team of officers has sought for the CCTV footages of the last 12 hours. A team is also going through the video footages at the hotel’s control room.
The cops have sealed the entire 3rd floor of the hotel and have called in forensic experts to scan the spot. The experts have photographed and lifted evidence including figerprints from the rooms, bed and door handles. The entire investigation is being videographed.
The shocking news comes just a day after Sunanda and her husband Shashi Tharoor were involved in a Twitter controversy, also involving a Pakistani woman journalist, Mehr Tarar.
As the indecorous row surrounding the suave 57-year-old Tharoor escalated, the controversy-prone minister took to Twitter to come out with a joint statement with his wife Sunanda Pushkar to say they were “happily married”, but distressed by “some unauthorised tweets”.
“We wish to stress that we are happily married and intend to remain that way. Sunanda has been ill and hospitalised this week and is seeking rest. We would be grateful if the media respects our privacy,” said the statement by Tharoor, who married Pushkar in 2010. The row erupted after exchange of some messages involving the three, some of them intimate.
“We are distressed by the unseemly controversy that has arisen about some unauthorised tweets from our twitter accounts,” the diplomat-turned politician said.
Pushkar had accused the 45-year-old Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar of stalking her husband and trying to “break” her marriage when she was away for medical treatment.
Both Tharoor and Pushkar had married twice before. The minister of state for human resources development is a Congress Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram.
Source: Dhaka Tribune
