NEW DELHI: The police on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court they have not seen the tweets of deceased Sunanda Pushkar nor were they relying on them in the case related to her death in which her husband and Congress MP Shashi Tharoor is the sole accused.
The investigating agency said her tweets are not part of the record or the charge sheet filed in the case and if Tharoor wants to rely on them, they are in the public domain and he can access them.
The submission was made before Justice Manoj Kumar Ohri in response to Tharoor’s plea seeking directions to the Delhi Police to preserve the Twitter account and tweets made by his Pushkar prior to her death in 2014.
The former union minister was accused by Delhi Police under Sections 498-A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 306 (abetment of suicide) of the Indian Penal Code, for which the maximum punishments are three years jail term and 10 years imprisonment, respectively.
Senior advocate Vikas Pahwa said the tweets are part of the electronic record before the trial court in the form of Pushkar’s laptop and mobile phone.
He said all his client was seeking was to access her Twitter account through those devices and show the trial court her tweets prior to her death so as to indicate her state of mind.
He also said the police was not relying on the tweets as it would lead to closure of the case.
Tharoor’s advocate argues in court
Shashi Tharoor’s advocate said Sunanda Pushkar’s last tweets were relevant as four autopsy reports and three medical board reports were not able to confirm till date whether it was a suicide or a homicide and the police in 2017 went for a psychological autopsy of the deceased which involves ascertaining her state of mind prior to her death.