Union Minister Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar death: Police gather CCTV footage

Early Life :
Sunanda Pushkar was born in a Kashmiri family of landlords and Indian Army officers native to Bomai. She was the only daughter of Lt. Col. Pushkar Nath Dass, who retired from the army in 1983 & Jaya Dass.

She has two brothers, one of whom works for a bank; the other is in the Army. The family moved out of Bomai in 1990. She graduated from the Government College for Women in Srinagar, where she studied during 1986-88.

In October 2009, she met Shashi Tharoor at a party organized by the billionaire Sunny Varkey. Tharoor had arrived in Dubai in 2007, with his Canadian wife Christa Giles.  Sunanda married Shashi Tharoor in 2010, after he was elected to the Indian Parliament. The couple had a Malayali wedding ceremony in Tharoor’s ancestral home at Elavanchery in Kerala, India. This was the third marriage for both of them.

On 17 January, 2014, a day after the Twitter controversy, Sunanda was found dead in room number 345 of The Leela Palace Hotel in the Chanakyapuri area of New Delhi.

CCTV footage at the hotel where union Minister Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar was found dead has been gathered by the police, an official said on Saturday.

Police have also questioned the The Leela Palace hotel’s staff.

“The records of telephonic calls made by Sunanda Pushkar, both from her cell phone and the land line phone of room number 345 (where she and Shashi Tharoor had checked in a day before) have been collected,” a police official told IANS.

Experts from the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) have also picked up evidence from the room.

According to police, Shashi Tharoor entered his hotel room between 8.00—8.30 p.m.. He found that the main hall of the suite was open but her bedroom was locked from inside.

Mr. Tharoor, who had attended the All India Congress Committee (AICC) session earlier in the day, used a “swipe card” to open the room, said police.