On Wednesday, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor was discharged by a Delhi court in a case related to his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death. Special Judge Geetanjali Goel passed the order in a virtual hearing in the case related to Pushkar's death in a luxury hotel in New Delhi, with the politician hailing the judgement as a "significant conclusion to the long nightmare" which had enveloped him.

Tharoor had married businesswoman Sunanda Pushkar in 2010. While there were some controversial moments overshadowing their time together - from the IPL controversy pertaining to Rendezvous Sports World to the Twitter incident involving Pakistani journalist Mehar Tarar - the couple insisted that they were happily married. On January 17, 2014, a day after the Twitter debacle, Pushkar was was found dead in a Delhi hotel suite. The couple had incidentally been living in The Leela Palace as their house was undergoing renovations.

While it was initially considered to be a suicide, later reports dubbed the death 'unnatural'. The preliminary autopsy by doctors at AIIMS suggested that there had been injury marks on her body and indicated that she had consumed a combination of sedatives and other strong medicines. A few months later, however, an AIIMS doctor said that he had been pressured to give a false report.

Nearly a year later, the Delhi Police contended that Pushkar had been murdered, even as a domestic help claimed that there had been an ongoing conflict with Tharoor. The matter gained additional traction as many high profile names decided to weigh in on the case. BJP leader Subramanian Swamy for example had tried to fight the case against the Congress leader.

Eventually, Tharoor was charged under sections 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 306 of the Indian Penal Code by the Delhi Police, but was not arrested in the case. Nearly four-and-half years after Pushkar's death, the Delhi Police accused Congress leader Shashi Tharoor of abetting the suicide of his wife.

In a nearly 3,000-page charge sheet, the police named Tharoor as the only person as accused while also alleging that he had subjected his wife to cruelty. The couple's domestic servant Narayan Singh had been named one of the key witnesses in the case. Tharoor was granted bail on July 5, 2018.

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"I have weathered dozens of unfounded accusations and media vilification patiently, sustained by my faith in the Indian judiciary, which today stands vindicated," the former Union minister said on Twitter after the latest verdict.

During the arguments, while police had sought framing of various charges, including 306 (abetment of suicide), senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, appearing for Tharoor, told the court that the investigation conducted by the SIT completely exonerated the politician of all the charges levelled against him.

The decision has not gone down quite as well with Swamy and other critics. "Defeat is of Modi’s government whose prosecutor in court must explain to public why he lost? And will Modi direct his close associate from Gujarat, the Delhi police commissioner to appeal against the order as was done in Jessica Lal murder," the BJP MP contended.