Murder Case Registered Over Sunanda Pushkar Death

Sunanda Puskhar Tharoor (R), wife of India's Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor, poses with her husband at the Indian F1 Grand Prix at the Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, October 27, 2013. — Reuters/file

NEW DELHI: Indian police on Tuesday registered a murder case against unknown persons over the death of Sunanda Pushkar, claiming the wife of the Shashi Tharoor was killed by poisoning, according to a Times of India report.

"We have got the final medical report from AIIMS, and we have been told that it was an unnatural death... It was not a natural death," Delhi Police chief B S Bassi told mediapersons.

"Sunanda died due to poisoning. Whether the poison was given orally or injected into her body is being investigated," he said adding that the report from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS) was received on Dec 29.


“We can only say which substance caused the poisoning after further investigation,” Bassi further said adding that, "For that we will send her viscera abroad."

Pushkar was a Dubai-based entrepreneur before she married Shashi Tharoor in 2010.

 She was found dead in a five-star hotel in New Delhi under mysterious circumstances on Jan 17 last year, a day after she had accused Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar of “stalking” her husband and of trying to “break” her marriage when she was away for medical treatment for three months.

Tarar had denied Pushkar’s accusation of an affair between her and the former high-flying UN diplomat.

5 Men Arrested In India Over Alleged Rape Of Japanese Tourist

India has seen freq protests over violence against women in recent months.

Five men have been arrested in India over the alleged rape of a Japanese tourist, police in the city of Kolkata.

The men allegedly operated as a gang, targeting single, female Japanese tourists. 

According to Pallab Kanti Ghosh, joint police commissioner in Kolkata, the victim, a 22 year-old from Saitama, Japan, was approached on November 20 of last year by a man who spoke Japanese "very well," 

and convinced her to accompany him and a friend to a variety of tourist spots over the following days. 

Two suspects were arrested from near the Buddhist pilgrimage center of Gaya in neighboring Bihar state and charged with rape, the officer said. Three other men were arrested for criminal conspiracy. The arrests were made on January 1. 

"The victim is cooperating with us in our investigation," he said.

The victim told police that she had also been forced to remove money from her bank accounts, and that the men had also withdrawn money using her ATM card without her knowledge.

The initial "First Information Report (FIR)" complaint filed with Kolkata police, obtained by CNN, focuses mainly on the extortion and theft of a sum of 76,000 rupees ($1,200) over several incidents. The charges were later amended to include rape. 

The FIR mentions molestation but does not contain accusations of rape, which were added to the victim's account during a subsequent appearance before a magistrate. 

Sexual assault is a high-profile problem in India, particularly following the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi in 2012. Since then, a Swiss tourist was also gang-raped while on a cycling holiday in India, and the Uber taxi service banned in the Indian capital after a driver was accused of raping a female passenger.