I’ve no will to live, wrote Sunanda Pushkar

NEW DELHI: “I have no will to live...all I pray for is death,” Sunanda Pushkar had written to her husband Shashi Tharoor nine days before she was found dead in a luxury hotel room in Delhi, police told a special court on Monday.
“The deceased used to write poems. On January 8, 2014, she said —‘I don’t care about the test. I have no will to live. All I pray for is death’—in an e-mail to the accused,” additional public prosecutor Atul Kumar Shrivastava told additional chief metropolitan magistrate (ACMM) Samar Vishal.

The hearing happened in the special court designated to hear matters pertaining to MPs and MLAs after the filing of chargesheet on May 14. Shrivastava asked the court to take cognisance of the chargesheet and summon Tharoor, who has been charged for abetment to suicide and domestic cruelty.

When Tharoor’s counsel requested to be heard by the court, Shrivastava objected to it and said it isn’t possible before the accused is summoned.

Shrivastava also submitted that Pushkar, before she died, had sustained injuries on her body that was reflected in the postmortem report. “When she was hospitalised, she had high fever and canula was given to her,” he said.

He also told the court that Pushkar’s death was due to poisoning, and though 27 tablets of alprax had been found in her room, it wasn’t clear how many she had consumed.

In order to substantiate its cruelty charge, the prosecution pointed out that on one occasion when Pushkar had gone to the washroom at the airport, Tharoor didn’t wait for her and she had to call another friend for help.

The court said it will decide on taking cognisance of the chargesheet on June 5.

Pushkar was found dead on the evening of January 17, 2014. Even though it was a murder probe with the FIR registered under IPC Section 302, police charged Tharoor under Sections 306 (abetment) and 498A (cruelty by husband) of IPC in a nearly 3,000-page chargesheet.

While the cruelty charge entails a maximum punishment of three years, abetment to suicide is a more serious crime and attracts a maximum punishment of 10 years in jail.