Shashi Tharoor rubbishes Republic TV expose, bashes Arnab Goswami

Republic had aired 19 audio tapes to question Tharoor's action after wife Sundanda Pushkar's death

Former Union minister and diplomat Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday rubbished as “misrepresentations and outright lies” the allegations made by Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV to question Tharoor’s actions after his wife Sunanda Pushkar’s death in 2014. The previous night, the newly launched news channel had aired 19 audio tapes in its purported exposé of the Congress parliamentarian’s actions.

Tharoor said in a Facebook post that the accusations were “exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies”, and called the anchor “an unprincipled showman masquerading as a journalist”.

A Congress member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor lamented that “someone would exploit a human tragedy for personal gain and TRPs”, and challenged Goswami “to prove his false claims in a court of law”.

On January 17, 2014, Sunanda Pushkar had been found dead in a 5-star hotel suite in Delhi. On the night before her death, she had got into a spat with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar on Twitter over the latter allegedly getting too close for comfort to Tharoor.

Police investigation and forensic reports since have shed little light on the cause of her death. The audio tapes aired by Republic TV seem to suggest misconduct on the part of Tharoor, who, the news anchor alleged, tampered with and concealed evidence. Goswami claimed Pushkar’s dead body had been shifted between rooms before the investigations began. Also, the news channel hinted at a foul play involving big names, and claimed Sunanda had been gagged to as she might have revealed some wrongdoings by big shots.

In a statement she had made before her death, Pushkar had said her husband had been flattered by the attention he received from the Pakistani journalist, and it irked her that she had taken upon her “the crimes of this man” once.”

Earlier, Pushkar had come into public glare when the case involving the alleged misappropriation and laundering of Indian Premier League (IPL) money under former commissioner Lalit Modi. Besides, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then the chief minister of Gujarat, had referred to her as Tharoor’s “Rs 6-crore girlfriend”.