THE CASE OF THE RECKLESS ROMEO

Perry Mason novels were a childhood favourite. The intriguing cases, the beautiful defendants, the painstaking investigations, and finally the courtroom drama in which Mason dramatically turns the tables on the prosecution to secure the release of his client... They have all the ingredients of a pot-boiler. No wonder many a Perry Mason novel by his creator Erle Stanley Gardner ended up as absorbing TV plays. Many thrillers by other authors, featuring Perry Mason as the central character, also made it to the screens. One such story was The Case of the Reckless Romeo, 

telecast in the US in 1992.

The story bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Sunanda Pushkar case, which I am about to narrate. But then, the title could fit her husband Shashi Tharoor like a glove. And so I have used it here. 

Let us take a quick peek.

He : Born in 1956. Handsome. Suave. Flamboyant. Educated. A man of letters, who began writing with a regular column on Foreign Affairs in THE ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA. Rich. A junior minister in the Congress-led UPA government after a successful career in India’s foreign service. Twice married and twice divorced, with a roving eye for beauty. Snotty. Condescending and snobbish to the extent of publicly proclaiming that flying in the Economy section was “cattle class”...  

She : Born in 1962. Glamorous. Glitzy. Rich. Ambitious. A social climber using her undeniable charm to penetrate elitist fortresses. Twice married and twice divorced. All ready for a third engagement with matrimony, provided the terms were right...

When they met, they felt they were made for each other. A dream, year-long courtship, almost entirely before media flashlights, ended in their marriage in 2010. Sunanda Pushkar became Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor.

Theirs was a dream alliance.

Man and Wife were inseparable. Like Mary's little lamb, wherever Sunanda went, Shashi went. He hardly ever left her alone. They could often be spotted walking hand in hand or Sunanda possessively caressing Shashi’s hair or unabashedly pecking him on the cheek. His friends admired these juvenile demonstrations. And his critics chided him by saying Shashi Tharoor ought to have been made the minister of ‘love affairs’.

The couple’s idyllic world, however, turned sour and on January 17, 2014, Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a suite in the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi under mysterious circumstances. 

A few months earlier, reports had surfaced that the Shashi-Sunanda marriage was heading towards disaster after Mehr Tarar, a beautiful Pakistani journalist, whom Sunanda termed an ISI agent, entered Tharoor’s life. Domestic helps and close friends talked about frequent verbal and sometimes physical spats between Shashi and Sunanada on Mehr Tarar's account. In fact, even though the couple had flown in together to Delhi a day before her death, they had bitterly fought over Tarar on the flight (Sunanda had even locked herself into the flight toilet, much to the amusement and chagrin of fellow travellers) and later in the airport. As a result they had chosen not to go to their plush Lodhi Estate home. They had instead come to Leela Palace separately and checked into separate rooms. After hours of confabulations, which involved some common friends, the couple finally put out a joint statement to scotch rumours that their marriage was on the rocks. They claimed that all differences had been resolved and they were again “happily married”. Thereafter, they shifted jointly to Suite number 345.

During the rest of their stay, Shashi Tharoor kept himself out of her hair by “busying” himself with party affairs, while Sunanda was left pretty much to herself with a domestic help, Narayan Singh, at hand to attend to personal needs.

On the fateful day, Tharoor returned at around 8 PM from an AICC meeting, only to find his wife lying dead in their hotel room. More than an hour later, he informed the Delhi police about his wife’s death. The police recovered the body from the hotel and sent it for autopsy. According to initial reports, Sunanda was suspected to have committed suicide. Later reports stated that the cause of death was “unnatural”. Dr Adarsh Kumar, who was part of the AIIMS team that conducted the post mortem, told the media that Sunanda’s arms had injury marks that appeared to have been caused by a “blunt instrument. Sources added that there was a bite mark on the left hand and several blue coloured contusions on her right hand, which could not have been self-inflicted. Yet the doctors, in all their wisdom, said these injuries may or may not be the cause of death. The autopsy report indicated that she died of drug overdose, most likely a combination of sedatives, other strong medicines and probably alcohol. Strips of Alprax, an anti-depressant, was found in her purse as well as in the room. This led the investigators to suspect that a suicidal overdose of this could have led to her death.

In a statement to investigators, Shashi Tharoor said : "Our married life was very happy and some misunderstanding which was there was cleared and she was happy about it." He also revealed that his wife was "a very happy personality" but was very ill after two surgeries. She was dependent on Alprax tablets to sleep, he said. Days before her death, Pushkar had been admitted to a hospital in Kerala for suspected lupus. Tharoor said she was discharged on January 14,  2014, after which they came to Delhi. In his statement to the magistrate, Tharoor claimed he had gone to Jaipur that day, and had come back to the hotel at 8 PM.  

"I decided to wake up Sunanda at 8.30 PM. I entered the bedroom of the suite asking 'darling how are you feeling,' there was no reply. I placed my hand on her forehead to check for fever and found it very cold. Her hands were stiff. I immediately called the doctors and the hotel management. But it was already too late."

Doctors at Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences in Trivandrum, who had examined her a few days earlier however claimed that Sunanda did not have any serious health problems, thereby raising serious doubts about the truthfulness of Tharoor’s claims. 

On 1 July 2014, the controversy over her death deepened when AIIMS doctor Sudhir Gupta, who headed the team that conducted the post mortem on Sunanda’s body claimed that he was pressured "by top officials" to submit a false report in the case to the effect that Sunanda died a "natural death". He claimed that he was being targeted because he did not bow to the pressure and gave a report stating that Sunanda's death was caused by drug poisoning that could be either suicidal or homicidal. Dr Gupta claimed he was prevented from telling the truth in his report due to Shashi Tharoor and Ghulam Nabi Azad's influence. In order to prove that the autopsy report was influenced, Dr Gupta has also submitted details of emails exchanged between the AIIMS director and Tharoor, thereby implying that the “top official” he had referred to was the Director himself.

Shashi Tharoor, however, maintained that he has, since the beginning, not created any obstacle in the investigation process. He said that he was cooperating fully with the police fulfilling all the formalities that are required by the investigation authorities.

On October 10, 2014 the medical team probing Sunanda’s death concluded that she had died of poisoning. On November 10, the hotel room, where she was found dead and which had been locked under the seal of the Delhi Police, was re-examined by police and forensic experts. Police officials claimed that during this examination, they had stumbled upon fluid marks on the bed and the carpet and a broken glass in suite number 345 of Leela Palace hotel. How such tell-tale evidences could have been ignored in the first place is not clear and would definitely weaken the police case when it comes before a court for trial.

Forensic experts inform that the stains on the bed linen and carpet had been caused by urine. These coupled with the injuries on Sunanda’s body and some tell-tale prick-marks on her hands indicate a violent struggle and forced injection of a poison. The viscera report that was filed recently also indicated the presence of a rare poison forcing the forensic authorities to send viscera samples to Scotland Yard for a detailed analysis to identify the specific poison.

On January 6, 2015 Delhi Police reported that Sunanda was murdered and filed an FIR in the regard. 

Less than a week later, maverick politician and senior BJP leader Subramanium Swamy claimed that she had been administered a Russian poison which was unknown to Indian forensic experts. He stated that Sunanda's husband Tharoor was a part of the murder conspiracy. Adding to the string of accusations against Tharoor, Swamy challenged him to reveal the identity of the 'killers' to the police.The BJP leader also accused Tharoor of trying to cover up his wife's murder as a natural death. Giving a totally new twist to the sordid story, Swamy claimed that Sunanda had been put to death as she had wanted to tell the truth about some dubious dealings in the IPL. "Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra's name would also have surfaced," he said.

Suddenly the case assumed new dimensions. What was once believed to be a straight forward suicide by the wife of a reckless Romeo has become a cause célèbre with political and financial ramifications. Which leads us to the questions : What was Sunanda’s Pushkar’s connection with IPL cricket? What was the damaging information she could have made public?  Who wanted to suppress the information so desperately as to warrant silencing her on a permanent basis? And in what way could Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law be linked to the whole sordid drama?

I shall go into these issues in my next post.