Insufficient material against Tharoor: Court

Shashi Tharoor. File pic/AFP

In the absence of specific allegations and sufficient material, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor could not be compelled to face the rigmaroles of a criminal trial, a Delhi court said while discharging him in a case related to his wife Sunanda Pushkar's death.

There was nothing to demonstrate prima facie that the accused had subjected the deceased to physical cruelty, Special Judge Geetanjali Goel said. Pushkar was found dead in a suite of a luxury hotel on the night of January 17, 2014.

She made these observations in the detailed court order passed on Wednesday. "In the present case, it cannot be said that the accused had ever intended or acted in such a manner which under normal circumstances would drive the deceased to commit suicide," the judge said in the detailed order made available later.

She stated that even if the case of the prosecution is taken on its face value that the accused had an affair with Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist, and the deceased was "distressed, agitated, upset and mentally dist-urbed, in the absence of anyth-ing further", it could not be said that the same would amount to mental cruelty.

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