The Congress on Monday said the chargesheet against its MP Shashi Tharoor in connection with his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s death was politically motivated, PTI reported. Tharoor was charged with abetting suicide.
The Congress alleged that a media trial had been conducted against Tharoor to defame him as part of a conspiracy. The party also accused the Delhi Police of acting on behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Rejecting the charges against the the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram, the party said Tharoor was being “hounded, persecuted and maligned”.
“We reject the charges in toto,” Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, according to PTI. “Your [Narendra Modi’s] statements threatening Congress leaders will not deter us from raising the voice of the people. Congress leaders including Shashi Tharoor will neither cow down nor bow down.”
Surjewala said there was no suicide note by the deceased to prove that she was being forced to commit suicide. “Where is the charge coming from? This is coming from the headquarters of the BJP. This is coming from the factory of lies of Narendra Modi.”
The Kerala Congress also accused the BJP of using power to suppress and insult its party leaders. “It is only the fascists who act in this manner to take their political rivals,” PTI quoted Kerala Congress president MM Hassan as saying. “The move is only to cut short the political career of the MP.”
The chargesheet was filed more than four years after Pushkar was found dead in a five-star hotel in Delhi in January 2014. Tharoor was questioned by the Delhi Police on several occasions in connection with the death.
The chargesheet concluded that Pushkar killed herself and hence no one has been charged with murder. But, it mentioned marital discord as a reason for suicide.
Tharoor called the chargesheet preposterous and said he intends to “contest it vigorously” and also questioned the methods and motivations of the Delhi Police for arriving at this conclusion. “No one who knew Sunanda believes she would ever have committed suicide, let alone abetment on my part,” the MP wrote on Twitter.
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