The Delhi High Court on Monday issued a notice to the Delhi police on Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s plea seeking a direction to Twitter India to preserve the account and tweets made by his deceased wife Sunanda Pushkar.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP, against whom the Delhi police have filed a chargesheet in a local court here of abetment to suicide and cruelty, said in his petition that the Twitter timeline and tweets of Pushkar were of utmost importance in the case.
Frame of mind
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa and advocate Gaurav Gupta, appearing for Mr. Tharoor, argued before Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri that perusal of the tweets of Pushkar would reflect her actual frame of mind which is contrary to the prosecution case.
The petition contended that Twitter could delete the account of Pushkar as she is not alive. Mr. Tharoor also 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.
The plea further stated that the documents related to the Twitter account of his wife were “deliberately withheld” by the prosecution and was neither produced before the trial court nor supplied to him.
“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 quite 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 committed suicide due to her differences with him.
Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel in the city on the night of January 17, 2014. The Delhi police’s chargesheet had named Mr. Tharoor as an accused for alleged offences under Sections 498A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty) and 306 of the Indian Penal Code (abetment of suicide).