rd th Topic of the week for discussion: 23 to 29 Jan. 201 4 Topic: Twittered to Death The Protagonist profile Sunanda Pushkar She was born in a Kashmiri family of landlords and army officers native to Bomai. She was the only daughter of Lt Col Poshkar Nath Dass and Jaya Dass. While studying at the Government College, she married a fellow Kashmiri Pandit Sanjay Raina. The couple divorced in 1988. Subsequently, Sunanda went to Dubai in 1989 and married Sujith Menon in 1991. Their son Shiv was born in November 1992. Sujith ran into financial trouble as a financial consultant. Sujith returned to India, and died in an accident in Delhi in March 1997. In October 2009, Sunanda Pushkar met Shashi Tharoor at a party organized by the billionaire Sunny Varkey. After their first meeting, Sunanda was seen often at Tharoor's side in social gatherings.She left TECOM Investments in mid-March 2010. Later that year, on 22 August, she married Shashi Tharoor in a Malayali wedding ceremony in Tharoor's ancestral home, at Elavanchery in Kerala, India. This was the third marriage for both of them. Shashi Tharoor Topic Introduction He is member of the Tharoor Tharavadu of Kerala heritage, was born in London, to Lily and Chandran Tharoor Shashi Tharoor's career in the United Nations began in 1978 as a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. From 1981 to 1984 he headed the UNHCR office in Singapore during the boat people crisis. In 1989 he was appointed as the Special Assistant to the Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, the unit that later became the Peacekeeping Operations in New York. Until 1996, he led the team responsible for peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia Until 2008, he was a career official at the United Nations, rising to Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information, but resigned after losing to Ban Ki-moon in the 2007 election for the Secretary-General. After his entry into politics in 2009, he served as Minister of State for the Ministry of External Affairs, but was forced to resign in less than a year after becoming embroiled in a political scandal. Tharoor's first wife was Tilottama Mukherji, a granddaughter of Kailashnath Katju, an academic from Kolkata. They have two sons, Kanishk and Ishan. Later he married Christa Giles, a Canadian diplomat working at the United Nations Mehr Tarar She is a Pakistani journalist and works as Assistant Editor with Daily Times. Mehr Tarar was born on 2 March 1968 at Rasulpur, Punjab, Pakistan in the well-known Tarar family there. She graduated from West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, United States with a degree in Journalism.[2] After the early break up of her marriage in Lahore, Pakistan, she remained a socialite in that city for many years and was later picked up by the 'Daily Times' newspaper to occasionally cover and report on some social events, based on which she started to claim to be a 'journalist'. Twitter incident On 15 January 2014, a series of intimate messages, supposedly sent by the Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar to Tharoor, were posted on Tharoor's Twitter account. The messages proclaimed Tarar's love for Tharoor. Tharoor tried to downplay the incident by stating that his account had been hacked. However, Sunanda later stated that the account had not been hacked and that she had posted the messages to expose what she believed to be Mehr's stalking of her husband. She accused Mehr of being an ISI agent. Later, she stated that she did not want to go public about the matter, especially in an election year. The next day, a note titled as "Joint statement by Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor" was published on Shashi Tharoor's Facebook page. The note stated that the couple was happily married, and that some personal comments not intended for publication had been misrepresented after being posted to Twitter. The note also stated that Sunanda had been hospitalised after being ill, and was seeking rest Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor had checked into the Leela Hotel as their home was being painted. Sunanda was reportedly allergic to paint and dust and therefore checked into the hotel on her return from Kerala. The couple was due to check out on Saturday morning, The Indian Express reported. The police officials have said that the couple had checked into two separate suites - 342 and 345. According to news reports, Sunanda Pushkar had sought the help of Rohit Kochhar, a friend and corporate lawyer, to help her draw up a will about three months before her death. At the time, she told him, “life is uncertain.” According to the report in Hindustan Times, at the time of drawing up her will, Pushkar was on good terms with her husband but worried about her health. “She asked me to do so when she was in the pink of moods and favourably disposed towards Shashi. She spoke about life’s uncertainty in the context of her illness,” said Kochhar. According to an article in Economic Times, Pushkar had considerable personal wealth. "A declaration in 2012-13 pegs her assets at more than 112 crore. Tharoor declared assets worth 6.34 crore." The Delhi Police probing Sunanda Puskhar’s death may record the statement of Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar. According to a report which appeared in DNA, the police are investigating any possible links that her alleged affair might have had with Sunanda's death. “If the probe establishes that Pushkar was distraught and depressed over the alleged affair which led to the suicide, then there is enough ground to make a case of abetment. It is only then that we will need to record Tarar’s statement and will seek the help of the external affairs ministry," said a senior investigating official. Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar, who has been involved in the controversy around Sunanda Pushkar's death, spoke to UK newspaper The Telegraph and said that she was "shattered" by the death. There was no trace of alcohol in the body of Sunanda Pushkar though some evidence of presence of anti-depressant drug was likely, AIIMS sources said today. Doctors at the AIIMS, where a three-member board of doctors performed the postmortem yesterday, had said the death was "sudden and unnatural". Read further: http://www.firstpost.com/india/live-sunanda-pushkar-had-drawn-up-will-three-months-prior-to- death-1346157.html?utm_source=ref_article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunanda_Pushkar http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/sunanda-pushkar-s-death-will-haunt-me-for-ages-mehr- tarar_905394.html .