#Sunanda Pushkar

Sunanda Pushkar death case: Delhi court discharges senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor
#Sunanda Pushkar

Sunanda Pushkar death case: Court adjourns order on framing of charges against Shashi Tharoor
#Sunanda Pushkar

Delhi police gets time to go through Sunanda Pushkar’s tweets
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Charge Shashi Tharoor for murder in Sunanda Pushkar case: Police to court
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Sunanda Pushkar's death: Cops say she was in mental agony because of Tharoor-Mehr affair
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Sunanda Pushkar's Death: Experts to examine documents, Arguments on charges on Aug 20 and 22

Sunanda Pushkar's death: It's too much private in the public

| Published: Friday, January 17, 2014, 23:37 [IST]

In 1997, when Princess Diana died in a deadly car accident in France, it was a great shock to the world. It is said that the overzealous media looking for an opportunity into her public life was responsible for her tragic death. Yet, it was an exception in an era when media was still not what it is today.

In 2014, when the wife of a Union minister of India is found dead following an ugly spat involving her private life over the Twitter, the same question haunts us again after 17 years, this time more as a dominant one.

Has media today turned into a Frankenstein which is after its own creator? There is a deep sorrow all around after Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a hotel room but is this a one-off case in this era? We learn in the popular media about young men or women ending their lives after being betrayed by an online friend of lover. Even there are instances when huge political controversies break out over an innocuous individual remark on a social media site like Facebook. These incidents do not catch the headlines in a way that the deaths of Princess Diana or Sunanda Pushkar do.

From Princess Diana to Sunanda Pushkar, 'death by media' is becoming a menace

Should we learn from the Sunanda Pushkar tragedy and desist from engaging in ugly spat over personal issues in the public? Princess Diana was hit by an intruding media but now, people often find themselves at the receiving end because they take their personal stuff to the public space through an easy and informal media. But there is no point in cursing the technology and social media for these tragedies. It is aftearll, we who are using these new forms of media and engaging in a dangerous game of exposing our private lives.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi spoke on a number of issues while presenting a roadmap on the Congress's functioning for the next five years. Should youth icons like him also spare a thought for the media excesses in future? Nobody knows the answer better than Shashi Tharoor at the moment.