Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday approached the Delhi High Court seeking direction to Twitter India to preserve the account and tweets made by his late wife Sunanda Pushkar.
The MP from Thiruvananthapuram, against whom the Delhi police have filed a chargesheet in a local court here for abetment to suicide and cruelty, said that the Twitter timeline and tweets of Pushkar was of utmost importance in the case.
He contended that Twitter could delete Pushkar’s account as she is not alive. Mr. Tharoor said he intends to bring on record the Twitter timeline and tweets of his deceased wife during the course of the trial to exonerate himself from the false charges.
Mr. Tharoor, in his plea, stated that the documents related to the Twitter account of his wife were “deliberately withheld” by the prosecution and was not produced before the trial court.
“The tweet of the deceased from the Twitter timeline i.e. the documents sought to be summoned by the petitioner [Mr. Tharoor] show without any pale of doubt that the deceased was not having any ‘suicidal ideations’ as is sought to be alleged by the prosecution,” the petition said.
“Rather the deceased was in a positive frame of mind and was quiet optimistic about her relationship with the petitioner,” it added.
The Congress leader said despite such overwhelming material, the police sought to conclude that the deceased allegedly died by suicide due to her differences with him.
Ms. Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel here on January 17, 2014. Delhi police’s chargesheet had named Mr. Tharoor an accused for alleged offences under Sections 498A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.