Delhi police gets time to go through Sunanda Pushkar’s tweets

New Delhi, July 16: The Delhi High Court has given the police time to go through the Twitter posts of late Sunanda Pushkar.

Pushkar, 51 was found dead in a hotel room on January 17, 2014, following which the police charged her husband, Shashi Tharoor with abetment to suicide.

During the hearing, Justice Manohar Ohri was told by the Delhi police counsel that her tweets were not part of the record or the chargesheet. If Tharoor wanted to rely on them, they were in the public domain and he could access them.

Tharoor had sought a direction to the Delhi police to preserve the Twitter account and posts prior to her death. He said that the tweets were part of the electronic record before the trial court in the form of Pushkar's laptop and mobile phone. He said that all the police had to do is to put it up as evidence before the court as an indicator of her state of mind before her death.

Tharoor represented by Vikas Pahwa told the court that the cause of Pushkar's death was inconclusive. He also said that the report was not conclusive on the reason for the death.

He said that if the police relied on the tweets, the case would be closed. Instead they relied on the statements of the witnesses, who had referred to her tweets while commenting on her state of mind.

The court then gave both sides time to file their submissions along with the case law on the issue raised by Tharoor. In his application, Tharoor had said that the tweets and the Twitter timeline were of utmost importance in the case and as she is not alive, there is an apprehension that they may be deleted. If this were to happen, it would deny him the right to exonerate himself from the charges levelled against him.

The police had told the court that Pushkar was suffering from mental agony due to a strained relationship with her husband. The case will be taken up next on September 18.