Sunanda-PushkarUnion Minister Shashi Tharoor recorded his statement before the Sub-Divisional Magistrate in Delhi on Sunday evening in connection with the death of his wife Sunanda Pushkar.

Tharoor had earlier in the day asked Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to expedite the probe into his wife Sunanda’s death case to bring out the truth. He said he will fully co-operate with the investigation.

A day after Sunanda’s cremation, Tharoor said, “I am horrified to read the reckless speculation in the media regarding this case.”

Sources said that the SDM is likely to record statements of four or five people today and it includes family members and friends of Sunanda. On Saturday, two domestic aides of the couple were questioned and their statements were recorded.

Sources added that Sunanda was on anti- depressant drugs and the overdose of drugs is believed to be the most probable cause of her death.

Preliminary post-mortem report will be given by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) to the SDM on Monday. The report called her death unnatural and sudden.

The post-mortem also revealed that she had not consumed any solid food. AIIMS Forensic Head Sudhir Gupta said, “Yes, she had a sudden unnatural death. We have preserved some samples for testing.”
However, the police and doctors have so far remained tightlipped about Sunanda’s death and are unwilling to comment on the cause of her death till the SDM completes his enquiry.

Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar has asserted that she had no role in the marital discord between union minister Shashi Tharoor and his wife, Sunanda Pushkar, who was found dead in a five-star hotel on Friday evening.

Ms Tarar, whom Mrs Tharoor had accused of having an affair with her husband and then of “stalking” him, told a Pakistani TV channel last night that she is a “victim of conspiracy”.

Ms Tarar, a 45-year-old Lahore-based journalist, has changed her profile picture on Twitter to a candle following Mrs Tharoor’s death on Friday.

She said she had met Mr Tharoor twice — once in India in April and then in Dubai in June last year. “There were a lot of people present there,” she said.

“When I wrote an article that mentioned him, his wife probably did not like that another woman whom she did not know praised him so much. So she asked him to stop talking to me. Despite that he (Tharoor) kept following me on Twitter after which she said stop following her (Tarar) on Twitter.

“I don’t know why she had a problem about me talking to her husband over phone or email. The talks I had with him is something that I can talk with anyone and anywhere in the world,” she said.

Ms Tarar, the mother of a 13-year-old boy, also said, “Have you googled? You will find that problems emerged in their marriage since May and June. I was not involved in their life. At that time, she didn’t know me nor was she blaming me for anything.

“Google their names and you will see what will appear. ‘Marriage is about to break’. ‘Trouble in paradise’. ‘Fairytale is over’. News has been appearing about their marriage for long. A Pakistani woman sitting here cannot spoil their marriage,” she said.

A court has directed Delhi Police to lodge a FIR against Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti for allegedly entering the house of some African women here. The minister denied the charge.

Metropolitan Magistrate Chetna Singh has told police to file charges of mischief, trespassing and criminal intimidation against Bharti after hearing a plea filed by the Africans, a police officer said.

The minister had reached the house last week following complaints from residents of the area in south Delhi that they were part of a prostitution and drug ring.

Minister Bharti said he had no information about the court order.

“I have no idea of any case being registered. If anyone has filed such a case, I will go and present my stand,” he told the media.

Bharti maintained that the entire episode had been recorded on camera and “none of our volunteers touched anyone”.

“No one is paying attention to the impact of drugs on the youths. No one is paying attention to the rackets that are operating,” he said.

He accused the police of complicity in the sex and drug racket.

Authorities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) have detained 27 trucks carrying goods from India to demand the release of their truck and driver detained by the Jammu and Kashmir Police for allegedly carrying narcotics worth Rs. 100 crore.

The incident took place on Friday night following the detention of a truck from PoK – as part of the cross-border trade – from which 100 kg brown sugar was seized at the Salamabad trade facilitation centre in Uri in J&K’s Baramulla district. The vehicle is part of 47 trucks that have been held up at the centre.

“The PoK authorities have detained more than 20 trucks and their drivers, demanding the release of the driver and the vehicle from that side which was used for smuggling drugs,” Deputy Commissioner of Baramulla GA Khwaja told PTI.

Officials claim that they allowed 46 trucks to return but Pakistani authorities refused to take them back until the seized truck, allegedly carrying narcotics, was also allowed to go. They said talks between the two sides were on to resolve the issue.

As many as 114 packets of brown sugar were recovered from the truck from PoK. The total weight of the seized contraband was around 100 kgs which is worth nearly Rs. 100 crore in the international market, Govind Ratan, Sub-Divisional Police Officer, Uri, said.

Wives of government servants have a “right” to know salary particulars of their husbands and these details should also be made public by their offices as mandated under suo-moto disclosure clause of the RTI Act, the Central Information Commission has held.

Information Commissioner M Sridhar Acharyulu said every spouse has a right to information about the salary particulars of the other especially for the purpose of maintenance.

“More so, wife has a right to know the salary particulars of the husband, who is an employee of the public authority,” he said.

The commissioner further said that the details about a government employee’s salary is no third party information and these have to be voluntarily disclosed under Section 4(1)(b)(x) of the RTI Act.

He said the salary paid to the public authority is sourced from the tax paid by the people in general and it has to be disclosed mandatorily under the RTI section.

“The information about the salary of employee or an officer of the same public authority cannot be considered as a third party information… Public authorities cannot reject such RTI applications about salary under the pretext of the third party information,” he held.

Acharyulu warned the Home Department of Delhi government that such denial of information will be wrongful and could incur penalty. The warning was in context of an application filed by Jyoti Seherawat seeking salary slip of her husband who is employed at the Home (General) department.

The information was denied as her husband gave in written to the department that such information should not be provided to anyone.

A tea vendor working at the Meenambakkam airport here has landed in money laundering net after a PMLA court recently froze his assets, which include large cash deposits and 2.5 kg of gold jewellery, in connection with a bribery case.

The case dates back to 2009 when CBI conducted searches on the export and import cargo office of the Chennai airport on alleged charges of corruption in the operations of the unit involving officials of the Customs department and others.

The agency, during this operation, searched the premises of G Kumar and seized over Rs 2.32 lakh and over 180 pieces of various gold ornaments. Cash of more than Rs 3 lakh was also found in his three bank accounts in the city.

The CBI later arrested Kumar, a class V dropout, and handed over the case to Enforcement Directorate (ED) for probe under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The ED’s probe threw up an interesting modus operandi about how Kumar, who used to work in tea shops since childhood, allegedly connived with airport and Customs officials and clobbered up illegal wealth and gold ornaments.

The probe agencies found out that Kumar who used to “distribute tea and other food items” to officials at the Meenambakkam airport terminal since 1987 had a duty pass to enter the high-security area and had become a good friend of the officials posted there over a period of time.

Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, wife of Union Minister Shashi Tharoor, was found dead at a five-star hotel in Delhi.

There was a PCR call at 7.30pm after which her body was found in a room at Leela Kempinski on Africa Avenue, the police said. They said she had checked into the hotel on Thursday. There were no visible injury marks and nothing to suggest poisoning either, said Deepak Mishra, special commissioner (law and order).

The incident comes within 24 hours after Pushkar was involved in a verbal spat with popular Pakistani columnist Mehr Tarar following the alleged hacking incident.

The shocking news comes just a day after Sunanda and her husband Shashi Tharoor were involved in a tweeter controversy, also involving a Pakistani woman journalist.

As the indecorous row surrounding the suave 57-year-old Tharoor escalated, the controversy-prone minister took to Twitter to come out with a joint statement with his wife Sunanda Pushkar to say they were “happily married”, but distressed by “some unauthorised tweets”.

“We wish to stress that we are happily married and intend to remain that way. Sunanda has been ill and hospitalised this week and is seeking rest. We would be grateful if the media respects our privacy,” said the statement by Tharoor, who married Pushkar in 2010. The row erupted after exchange of some messages involving the three, some of them intimate.

“We are distressed by the unseemly controversy that has arisen about some unauthorised tweets from our twitter accounts,” the diplomat-turned politician said.

Pushkar had accused the 45-year-old Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar of stalking her husband and trying to “break” her marriage when she was away for medical treatment.