The Extraordinary Life and Death of Sunanda Pushkar

By Sunanda Mehta

An extraordinary life. A strange death. The untold story of Sunanda Pushkar.

On 17 January 2014, Sunanda Pushkar, businesswoman and wife of writer and politician Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in her hotel suite in New Delhi. Her death was as shocking as it was suspect, spawning many a controversy and complex legal battles. Her life was no less dramatic but far lesser known.

A culmination of material drawn from personal archives, numerous interviews and investigation across continents, this riveting biography attempts to answer the question: Who really was Sunanda Pushkar? Was she a social climber hankering after power and fame? Or was she bold and unconventional, achieving success on her own merit only to become a casualty of circumstance? Was she a villain or a victim? Or a bit of both?

In search of these answers, Sunanda Mehta, journalist and Pushkar’s former schoolmate, traces her subject’s life from her early days in cantonment towns, to her first two marriages, a largely unknown stint in Canada, her rise as a Dubai businesswoman, and finally her much-publicized years with Tharoor until her controversial death shook the nation.

Through the soaring highs and wrecking lows that marked her forty-nine years, Sunanda Pushkar lived with passion, ambition and defiance. This definitive biography is the account of her phenomenal life and its turbulent end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Jul 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781529036954

Book preview

Sources

Cast of Characters

In order of appearance

Shiv Menon Son of Sunanda Pushkar from her second marriage with Sujith Menon. Spent his childhood mostly in Dubai, and later in Canada. Shiv was a college student in Dubai when Sunanda passed away in January 2014.

Shashi Tharoor Sunanda’s third husband and prominent Congress minister at the time of her death. Tharoor is a Member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He has been a career diplomat who rose to the rank of Under-Secretary General before he resigned in 2006. He is also a best-selling author, speaker and columnist.

Mehr Tarar Lahore-based Pakistani journalist. A graduate of West Virginia University, and single mother to a son, she first met Tharoor in 2013 at a social gathering and remained in touch with him on email and Twitter.

Sanjay Dewan Honorary Consul General of Cape Verde; close friend of Sunanda. He was present at the suite of the hotel where she died.

Narayan Singh and Bajrangi Trusted domestic help and driver respectively for the Tharoor–Pushkar household. Both individuals were present at the hotel suite on the day of Sunanda’s death and have been since extensively interrogated by the Delhi Police and made to undertake a polygraph test.

Ashish Dass Sunanda’s youngest brother who moved to Dubai with his sister’s support and is now settled there with his wife and daughter.

Brigadier Rajesh Pushkar Sunanda’s younger brother and an officer in the Indian Army.

Lieutenant Colonel Pushkar Nath Dass Sunanda’s deceased father, a retired officer of the Indian Army. He passed away on 5 June 2019 in Jammu.

Jaya Dass Sunanda’s mother, who passed away in 2010, at the height of the Indian Premier League controversy.

Sanjay Raina Sunanda’s first husband. They met in 1984 in Srinagar, married in 1986 and divorced in 1988. Sanjay went on to become a pop star and singer and is presently a restaurateur specializing in Kashmiri cuisine.

Sujith Menon Sunanda’s second husband and father to Shiv Menon. Sujith and Sunanda met in 1988 and married in 1991. Sunanda moved to Dubai because Sujith was working there. He was found dead in Delhi under mysterious circumstances in March 1997.

Laxmi Ramachandran Elder sister to Sujith Menon, and now the only surviving member of the original Menon family. Laxmi is married to a naval officer who is now retired. They live in Kochi.

Daljeet ‘Del’ Singh (name changed) A married man from North India, he was Sunanda’s partner for a short period and moved from Dubai to Canada with her in 1999.

Mukesh Sethi A Connecticut-based dentist who met Sunanda in Canada, soon after which he and his wife Sangeeta became close friends with Sunanda. Shiv Menon, Sunanda’s son, considers Mukesh and Sangeeta his godparents.

Vijay Kalra A Chartered Accountant from New Delhi who moved to Canada in 1983–84. Vijay and Sunanda were in a relationship for about two years while in Toronto.

Jiten Trasy A banker by profession, Jiten was one of Sunanda’s friends in Dubai who also immigrated to Canada around the time she did. He stayed with her and Shiv for the duration of his stay in Toronto.

Raja Waheed Well-known real estate agent in Toronto who migrated to Canada from Pakistan. Over time, Raja and his family became close friends with Sunanda.

Regina Mazhar One of Sunanda’s closest friends in Dubai who was with her when she was admitted to the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences just days before her death. Regina runs a successful yoga-and-pilates studio in Dubai.

Nalini Singh Well-known veteran investigative journalist and TV presenter. Became friendly with Sunanda when she moved to Delhi as Shashi Tharoor’s wife. Nalini was among the last people Sunanda talked to before she died on 17 January 2014.

Abhinav Kumar An IPS officer and graduate of Oxford, Abhinav was interviewed and personally selected by Shashi Tharoor to be his Personal Secretary and was privy to much of the goings-on in the Tharoor–Pushkar household.

Dr Sudhir Gupta Head of Department – Forensic Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). He headed the panel that conducted the post-mortem of Sunanda’s body. Later he alleged that he was pressured by the Director of AIIMS to submit a false report claiming that Sunanda had died of natural causes.

Subramanian Swamy Politician with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), economist and statistician. In July 2014, he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a CBI probe into Sunanda’s death, and in July 2017 filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking an investigation into its mysterious circumstances.

Prologue

Dubai

17 January 2014

FRIDAY HAD DAWNED UNEASILY for Shiv Pushkar Menon. Something felt different, as if the earth had stopped rotating. But it was only several years later that Shiv would find the words to describe ‘the worst day of my life’.

The past couple of days had been excruciatingly stressful, full of arguments between Shiv and his mother, Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor. Their latest heated telephonic exchange had lasted until 3 a.m.

From one end of the line in New Delhi, Sunanda had been berating Shiv for his ‘irresponsible’ lifestyle, asking him to stop partying and wasting his time. From the other end in Dubai, Shiv asked her to keep her truculent anger in check and not blow up on public platforms. She really just had to find her inner peace and destroy this ‘angry monster’ that lived inside her . . .

Shiv and his mother always exchanged great advice but never really heard each other.

Exhausted and spent, the son finally decided to switch off both his mind and the phone and try to get some sleep. But the unsettling feeling would not go away. For even through the arguments, marked by Sunanda’s raised decibel levels and strong, acerbic words, the desperation in her voice had not eluded him. And that disturbed him. Deeply. When he woke, it was once again with this unsettling premonition that something was terribly wrong. ‘You know they say parents and their children have this dimension-transcending bond,’ he mused some years later. ‘Well, it’s real.’

On that day, however, he was more sure of the fact that his mother’s mental health wasn’t in the best state. He felt his stepfather, Shashi Tharoor, wasn’t doing the greatest job of being there for her either. Tharoor, a former diplomat, was already a prominent Congress minister at the time.

The twenty-one-year-old started feeling more than a tad guilty for not being beside his mother in Delhi, especially when she had insisted that he visit her. He had a huge load of university work in Dubai that he simply couldn’t abandon and go away. But this fact did little to assuage his guilt.

So, further persuaded by Nakkul Khanna and Sridevi, two of Sunanda’s closest friends in Dubai, and also succumbing to his discomfort, Shiv now booked his flight to New Delhi and prepared to leave three days later. But around noon, as he made his way to Nakkul’s house for lunch, even three days seemed too far away.

Nakkul Khanna was an entrepreneur. His close friendship with Sunanda went back nearly four years. He and his wife Sheetal had invited Shiv over for lunch that day. This had become a routine at the Khannas’ most Fridays, the first day of the weekend in the UAE. For one, ever since Sunanda had married author-politician Shashi Tharoor and moved to Delhi, the Khannas had sensed Shiv’s loneliness as he continued with his life and studies in Dubai, living by himself. Shiv had confessed to the Khannas that he was not happy about Sunanda’s marriage to Shashi Tharoor and often felt rejected and desolate. The Khannas, as concerned friends of Sunanda, had also been following the Twitter war that was raging between her and the Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar at that time. Sunanda suspected Mehr of having an affair with Tharoor and had, characteristically, let fly at her on Twitter. For everyone to see. The Khannas understood that Shiv needed to be with them more than ever on that day.

It was while they were all sitting down to a fairly late lunch that Nakkul received a call from New Delhi. It was from Sanjay Dewan, Honorary Consul General of Cape Verde, another close friend of Sunanda. Nakkul returned to the table and, without explanation, suggested to Shiv that he advance his journey and fly out that night itself. He too would accompany Shiv to Delhi.

Shiv, eager to see his mother, readily agreed. No questions were asked. The idea of having Nakkul’s company for the journey and while dealing with his mother’s state of mind appealed to him. He changed his tickets and called up his mother, both to gauge her mood and to tell her that he would be arriving in a few hours’ time and take charge of matters.

The call was taken by a trusted domestic help of the Tharoor household – Narayan Singh. Sunanda was sleeping, he said. It was late afternoon in Dubai – early evening in India. Shiv decided to quickly finish lunch so he could go home and pack.

As he was packing, he got an unexpected call. It was from his uncle, Sunanda’s younger brother, Ashish Dass, who also lived in Dubai. It was unexpected because it was only recently that Ashish had re-entered their lives, after many years of a cold war between him and Sunanda – the woman who had been responsible for getting Ashish to Dubai and whom he had always considered more of a mother than a sibling.

This was the first time that he was speaking to Shiv in years. Earlier that month, when he saw his uncle’s name appear on his mother’s phone and had asked her why he was calling after so many years, Sunanda had told him, rather nonchalantly, that all was now good between them.

Ashish’s voice betrayed concern. Like Shiv, he was worried about Sunanda’s health and suggested that they both fly to Delhi that night to be with her. During the short conversation they had, Shiv told Ashish that his mother had been upset with him lately and that the whole Twitter rampage between her and Mehr Tarar had deeply unsettled her. Ashish reminded Shiv that Sunanda had always been pained about the family never being with her when she needed them. Seeing her son and her brother at this critical time would definitely lift her spirits. When they met her this time, it would be good to make her feel loved and important. Shiv told him about the flight he had already booked and Ashish said he would ensure he was on the same one or the next.

Shiv was starting to feel a bit better. It was now evening in Dubai. He decided to go to Ashish’s place after lunch. But within a few minutes of his arrival, his cell phone started to ring incessantly. Several of his mother’s friends were calling him, one after the other, to ‘check’ on him. A couple of them suggested that Sunanda seemed unwell and that he should perhaps fly to India to see her.

Shiv thought he knew exactly what they were hinting at. The belligerent Twitter war of the past few days between Sunanda and Mehr Tarar had become grist for the gossip mill in India, and beyond. There were rumours, and they were gaining credence by the day, that Shashi Tharoor was involved with Mehr in an extramarital affair.

Sunanda had taken to social media to vent her anger, and the entire sordid saga was fast turning uglier. And dangerous. A furious Sunanda had been hurling not just vitriolic accusations at Mehr, but had gone to the extent of calling her an ISI agent.¹

Despite his internal torment, Shiv allowed himself a wry smile at that particular tweet, and thought about what seemed to him its unwarranted and wholly unexpected impact. For just a day earlier, when Sunanda had poured out her anguish on the phone about Tharoor’s alleged affair with the Pakistani journalist, Shiv had jokingly said to his mother, ‘Oh, come on, Mom, she’s probably just some ISI agent who’s tracking him!’ The next thing he knew, Sunanda had announced exactly that, causing a huge furore in both the virtual and political world. Shiv was shocked. His light-hearted joke had become such an unnecessary issue. He had no idea she would go to these lengths, but then realized that was precisely what his mother was so capable of, especially when her anger was roused.

On 15 January, a series of tweets appeared on Shashi Tharoor’s timeline that seemed to be direct messages to him from Mehr Tarar.²

@mehrtarar I love you, Shashi Tharoor. And I go while in love with you, irrevocably, irreversibly, hamesha. Bleeding but always your Mehr. Shashi I’m not crying anymore. I’m not falling to pieces. I’m more lucid than ever. How little I knew you became visible to me

@mehrtarar You unfollowed me. You don’t RT me and you don’t answer me on twitter. I can live with your favourites. I have your personal validation of your words. I dont need any public one. For that I will wait till we are together publically really mehr

Soon Mehr tweeted:

Okay. What’s going on? Who’s tweeting to me? I had an ‘affair’ with Shashi Tharoor and he’s tweeting to me??? How does that work?

But a few minutes is a large span of time in the virtual world and Twitter was by now abuzz with these messages in the public domain. Within minutes, Tharoor tweeted that his account had been hacked and would be deactivated for some time.

Shashi Tharoor@ShashiTharoorFollow: Sorry folks, my @Twitter account has been hacked & will be temporarily deactivated. Bear with me while we solve this

The incriminating messages had also been removed. But when a publication called up Sunanda for clarification, she not only blew Tharoor’s weak defence to smithereens but minced no words about what she thought of the whole situation:

‘Our accounts have not been hacked and I have been sending out these tweets. I cannot tolerate this. This is a Pakistani woman who is an ISI agent, and she is stalking my husband. And you know how men are. He is flattered by the attention. I took upon myself the crimes of this man during IPL (Indian Premier League). I will not allow this to be done to me. I just can’t tolerate this. I have nothing more to say.’³

It seemed that Sunanda had accessed Tharoor’s phone and his attempts at damage control only stoked the fury of this woman scorned and ostensibly betrayed. And now she unleashed a barrage of accusatory tweets against Mehr.

@MehrTarar the audacity of a woman desperately in love with an Indian ‘please Shashi don’t make me go I pleaded and begged I love u Shashi.’

@MehrTarar leave us Indians alone and stop talking to my husband and pleading with him its degrading respect yourself as a woman.

Its funny on an election year pple want to bring an MP using a Paki journo who has lost her job and tries with everyone including Omar

Or perhaps to build up twitter followers that’s a cheap thing 2 do ask the Pakistanis what they think of her & yes 20 calls a day is stalking

For her information Shashi an& I are very happy together sad for her to know i guess I get sick and go away 4 treatment & the vultures pounce.

Mehr’s comebacks sounded equally offensive, oscillating between self-righteous indignation and caustic, personal comments against Sunanda.

I have nothing to say to a woman clearly out of her mind. To be called as ISI agent, a stalker..I have nothing to add. Just shows who she is

I’m not avoiding answering any of u. I just consider it beneath me 2 respond 2 personal attacks on me here. Not a jerry-Springer reality show

I interviewed 2 politicians in India; Apr, Dec. Hv them on tape. Doing a show on Business nxt mnth. And I am a mother. Trashing me w/ISI..grow up

My name is Mehr, and I am not an ISI agent. Or RAW. Or CIA. Or Mossad. Or even the dead KGB. May I go now?

So I stalk on bbm and phone. The last I checked it was a two-way thing. Or mybe technology changed while I stalked?

The blondes aqal is weaker thn her grammar and spellings. From an ‘affair’ it has become stalking..make up your mind darlin’. Which one is it?

Cyberspace crackling with these high-profile fireworks, the Indian media was of course having a field day. By now, though, Shiv had moved a few steps beyond the messy drama. It did not matter to him anymore whether the affair was true or false. All that concerned him was that Sunanda seemed to be losing her balance. And everyone who knew her also knew that if there was one person who could control Sunanda and help her regain her equilibrium, it was him. Shiv took all her friends’ calls and patiently told them that he would shortly be with her and they would soon hear the news that she was much better, physically and mentally.

At his uncle’s house, Shiv was doing a last-minute check on his packing when he received a text he could not quite comprehend. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ it said. It was from a person Shiv had met in Goa, a man in his mid-fifties, whom Shiv held in high regard.

He replied instantly. ‘I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.’

The next message read: ‘Oh, have you not seen the news?’

In an instant Shiv opened his laptop and started keying in his mother’s name on Google. He had only typed the first four letters when the search engine helpfully threw up a suggestion: ‘Sunanda Pushkar’s Dead Body Found in 345 Leela Hotel’.

Almost immediately, Ashish was behind him and slammed the laptop shut. As Shiv turned his questioning eyes towards him, Ashish said, ‘The media has lied once again – she is just unwell and they are blowing this thing out of proportion.’

Shaken but only too aware about the media’s bizarre witch-hunt regarding his mother, escalating the Twitter war into a paparazzi pop-up the past few days, Shiv thought to himself, ‘Oh, we are going to sue the media for saying she’s dead . . . This is messed up.’

Within the next hour they reached the swanky Terminal 3 at the Dubai International Airport, dedicated exclusively to Emirates Airlines.

Just as he was settling in the lounge, Shiv’s phone once again started to go off madly, making him think of Roman fireworks. Exhausted, he ignored the calls and decided instead to walk across the Emirates lounge to get himself a snack. He passed a huge 65-inch flat-screen television on the way. CNN was on. As he turned his eyes to the screen, he watched what indeed looked like his mother’s body being taken out of a hotel and into an ambulance. Wrapped in white tarp.

Shiv froze. He turned to look at his uncle who was now standing beside him. He realized that Ashish had known all along, much before he made that call earlier in the day asking Shiv to go with him to Delhi.

His mother was dead. And had been so for several hours.

Patiala Cantonment, 2014

It was a cold January evening and the chill was closing in on the sleepy cantonment town of Patiala. Colonel Rajesh Pushkar had just reached home from the gym located a couple of kilometres from his house in the army area, when his cell phone rang. He looked at the caller’s name. Shashi Tharoor.

Rajesh was a little surprised. His brother-in-law did not call too often. But for the last few months Rajesh and Sunanda had not been on talking terms. They had argued over Shiv, Sunanda’s son in Dubai, and his future. Rajesh was of the opinion that Shiv should come to India, where Sunanda was now living, and stay with her. Shiv, on the other hand, did not want to leave Dubai and be torn away from his friend circle. So, even though Sunanda would fly to Dubai frequently to see him, Rajesh knew Shiv was lonely and felt he was still too young to be left on his own. As a child, Shiv had spent two months with Rajesh, who felt he had every right as a concerned uncle to express his views about Shiv’s well-being.

But Rajesh was not overly worried. Over the last four decades of his relationship with his elder sister, fights of this kind leading to prolonged silences between them had not been very unusual occurrences. He knew it was a matter of time until one of them rang the other and communication was restored.

He answered the call.

‘Hello, Shashi?’ Rajesh said tentatively, as it could have been one of Tharoor’s assistants making the call.

‘Ra,’ came Tharoor’s voice on the other end. ‘She has left us.’

Rajesh was shocked and could not believe what he was hearing. Tharoor had to repeat the words three or four times before the gravity of what he was saying could sink in for the brother. Sunanda was no more.

Tharoor mentioned that Rajesh was the first person he was calling to convey the news.

All Rajesh could think of was to call Anu, his wife, and tell her that they had to drive down to Delhi that very instant. The words were still ringing in his ears, ‘She has left us.’

Even as the news was still sinking in, Rajesh wondered how he could convey it to the eighty-four-year-old man sitting quietly in his room at the end of the corridor in his house. Lieutenant Colonel (retd) Pushkar Nath Dass, their father. There was of course the possibility that he may not even grasp the truth.

It had been some time now since dementia had consumed the retired colonel. His wife, Sunanda’s mother, had passed away in 2010, at the height of the IPL controversy. In fact, the family believed that it was not brain haemorrhage that had taken her life but the huge negative publicity the IPL episode had spawned for her daughter. With the family already having lost the mother after one devastating controversy concerning Sunanda, there was reason for them to believe that they now needed to look after Sunanda’s father with extreme care.

Rajesh, his wife and their daughter left without telling him anything, while Rajesh’s son stayed back with his grandfather. The three drove down to Delhi and went straight to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where Sunanda’s body lay.

The next day Naveen Jindal would send a chopper to Patiala to bring Sunanda’s father to Delhi for the funeral. For Lt Col Dass, it would be the second time in his life that he would see his daughter’s body in a lifeless state.

1

Almost Stillborn

Sopore, Srinagar

27 June 1964

A SILENCE DESCENDED IN the corridor outside the operation theatre of the Government Hospital nestled in the picturesque Sopore valley in Srinagar. It was a silence born of another silence. The baby girl just delivered by Jaya Dass, wife of Second Lieutenant Pushkar Nath Dass, had not cried on birth. Instead, she appeared to be stillborn.

Second Lieutenant Dass had reached the hospital a few hours earlier on a high. Just that day, the young officer had been commissioned in the Indian Army and had donned his first army rank. P. N. Dass hailed from Bomai, eight kilometres from Sopore town. Soon after he finished his graduation in 1947, he had run away from home – to become a film star!

Incidentally, decades later the genes would show up again in his grandson, Rajesh’s son, who was honing his talent as a singer, even as he pursued an engineering degree.

But Pushkar Dass, fortunately or unfortunately, did not get too far in his pursuit of a career in films. He was on his way to Bombay when someone stole all the money he was carrying while he was in Amritsar, seriously jeopardizing his ambitions. The hapless young man had no option but to remain in Amritsar. He took up work as a clerk in the town until he could save up enough to go home. It was some time before he could finally gather the courage to confess everything to his mother.

But before he and the rest of the family could determine what his next course of action should be, war clouds started gathering over India. It was 1962 and the Sino-Indian war seemed inevitable. The Indian Army was carrying out an emergency commission and Pushkar Dass had felt compelled to join the armed forces. And he happened to be commissioned on 27 June 1964, the day his wife was wheeled into the delivery room at Sopore’s Government Hospital.

To become a first-time father and an officer of the Indian Army on the same day was a rare honour indeed. P. N. Dass couldn’t believe his good fortune. Except that, instead of making the usual cheerful announcement of a child’s birth, the doctor emerged from the operation theatre to give the hopeful father waiting outside some solemn news. ‘It seems to be a stillborn baby.’

He told Dass they were doing all they could to revive her. The almost-father looked on helplessly

Reviews for The Extraordinary Life and Death of Sunanda Pushkar

[Varadan Anandanpillai · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A very well written and a comprehensive one at that. After a long time I finished reading a book. Kudos to the author. The actors came alive and it was as though the author is allowing us a peep into her life while they were happening. A very mercurial character was brought to life and portrayed vividly taking into consideration all the norms. A very good book indeed. Fortunate to have read.