The inside story of what happened on the day of Sunanda Pushkar’s death

Mangalore Today/India Today

The story of Sunanda Pushkar’s death took a new turn with the subdivisional magistrate probing the incident telling the police to investigate the poisoning angle. This could mean that the police will now look at the murder angle as well as possible suicide, though no suicide note is known to have been found.

 

Mail Today has pieced together the last two days of Sunanda’s life. The details have been revealed to this newspaper by a close friend who has declined to be identified for reasons of privacy. The friend’s account is vital for it reveals that at least three people were present at different times on Wednesday evening with Sunanda Pushkar in room 307 of the Leela Palace. After an ugly spat with husband, junior HRD minister Shashi Tharoor in the aircraft on Wednesday afternoon, Sunanda refused to accompany him to his Lodhi Estate residence on arrival in Delhi. Instead she booked herself at the Leela. This is the friend’s account: After landing at Delhi airport on a flight from Thiruvananthapuram with Shashi Tharoor, Sunanda refused to go to the Tharoors’ government bungalow in Lodhi Estate. This paper had earlier reported that the two had been arguing in the aircraft as well at the airport.

Sunanda went straight to the Leela Palace hotel and booked herself into room 307 and not in suite number 345 as earlier believed. In the evening, a close friend, who is also Kashmiri and lives in south Delhi, came to assuage and calm her. But Sunanda was unrelenting in her anger and she refused to listen to him. They were then joined a prominent former CEO, also a close friend, who spent a couple hours in the room, trying to reason with her.

Soon after this, another friend of Sunanda’s, who is a woman, came. She realised that the situation was out of control and moved into the room. The other two friends left after some time.

In the presence of this friend, an agitated Sunanda called up Mehr Tarar, the Pakistani journalist who she had accused of having an affair with Shashi. She continued to chain-smoke through the night and was nervous and stressed. Soon after, Shashi came to the room and was "contrite and apologetic". But her rage was such that she refused to listen to him. The next day, he also booked two rooms, number 345 which was the suite Sunanda was found dead in ultimately and number 342 for his staff.

Sunanda, the friend says, then began to feel a little less agitated and at around 2:30 on Friday morning, ordered a mushroom soup for herself and burger for her friend.

Sensing that Sunanda was feeling better, the friend left for the airport around 5am. That was the last time she saw Sunanda alive.