[Rei Murasame]

Sunanda Pushkar has died under mysterious circumstances.

NEW DELHI: An aide to minister of state Shashi Tharoor said on Friday night that Sunanda Pushkar was found dead at her hotel room at 8.30pm but there was "no sign of foul play".

Speaking to the media outside The Leela Palace hotel, Abhinav Kumar said: "We will not be able to give you the definite cause of death. There was no sign of foul play, no poisoning."

Pushkar, who married Tharoor in 2010, was found dead in room 345 of the hotel in south Delhi where the couple had checked in Thursday morning.

Kumar said Tharoor, who had attended the AICC session in the morning, found the room locked from inside. He thought she was sleeping.

"When he went to check on her, he found her dead at 8.30pm," the aide said, adding that Tharoor immediately summoned a doctor.

The aide said the couple moved into the hotel as their house was being painted.

"They were staying here since Thursday morning. The cause (of death) is not known."

In the absence of any definitive answers, people are variously claiming that she killed herself, or that her husband killed her, or that the Pakistani ISI have killed her.

The news of her death actually hit the media in the middle of evening news, it seems, since it interrupted NDTV's broadcast:

Union minister Shashi Tharoor's wife, Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, found dead
[youtube]KQlWuSUyACI[/youtube]

Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, wife of union minister Shashi Tharoor has been reportedly found dead at Leela Hotel in Delhi. This just a day after the Tharoors said they are "happily married and intend to remain that way," after a controversy surrounding them and Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar broke out on Twitter.
Also Read: http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/sunan ... eststories

Article 370 right now unfair: Sunanda Pushkar (Aired: December 2013)
[youtube]gfmR8pVsLDA[/youtube]

Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, a Kashmiri Pandit, talks of her own experience on citizenship rights after marrying outside the state. She also says that women are discriminated against in J&K and even after amendment to the old anti-women law her son can't inherit her property in Jammu and Kashmir. On Article 370, she adds, that it needs a re look and is "right now unfair".

Also, basic background from wikipedia:

Sunanda Pushkar (January 1, 1962 – January 17, 2014) was a Canadian businessperson and spouse of the Indian Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor. She was a sales manager in the Dubai-based TECOM Investments, and a co-owner of the India-based Rendezvous Sports World.[2]

Sunanda Pushkar was born in a Kashmiri family of landlords and Indian Army officers native to Bomai. She was a daughter of Lt. Col. Pushkar Nath Dass, who retired from the army in 1983. She has two brothers, one of whom works for a bank; the other is in the Army.[3] The family moved out of Bomai in 1990, after their house was set afire by army as they were allegedly providing refuge to millitants. She graduated from the Government College for Women in Srinagar, where she studied during 1986-88.[2]

While studying at the Government College, she married a fellow Kashmiri Pandit and a hotel management graduate 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. In Dubai, started a profitable event management business called Expressions, and became well-known for her networking with sponsors and artists for fashion shows. The company organized several model shows for product launches. Sunanda worked with several Indian fashion designers and models, including Hemant Trivedi, Rhea Pillai, Vikram Phadnis and Aishwarya Rai. Later, she joined Bozell Prime Advertising as an accounts executive. She and her husband organized a Mammootty show together, which made a financial loss. According to one report, the couple had collaborated on the show in an attempt to save their failing marriage. According to Sunanda, Sujith had run into financial trouble as a financial consultant. Sujith died in an accident in Delhi in March 1997.[4][5]

After Sujith's death, Sunanda started getting threatening calls from his creditors. For a few months, she left her four-year old son with her sister-in-law, and later with her parents. By the time she brought him to Dubai, he had developed a communication disorder, and had stopped talking. She left Bozell Prime to spend time with her son, and later joined Ravissant. Struggling as a small-time event manager in Dubai, Sunanda moved in as a paying guest at her friend's apartment in Al Satwa. She spelt her name as "Sue P. Menon" on her business cards, and later, she started using her father's name "Pushkar" as her last name. According to her, she faced financial troubles, as she had to repay Sujith's debts, support her parents and her brother through the engineering college.[4][5]

Impressed by the Canadian healthcare system, she emigrated to Canada in the 1990s, as her son needed speech therapy. According to one account, she lived with a banker companion in Toronto.[4] According to Sunanda, she became a partner in an IT firm called "Valley Resources" through sweat equity, after a San Francisco-based friend introduced her to the founders. Subsequently, she became wealthy during the dot-com bubble, managing to buy her own house and a BMW car. The business was impacted by the post-9/11 slowdown and closed in 2001. After four months of unemployment and financial difficulties, Sunanda did a course in emotional intelligence, and joined a company called Noble House International. She organized "Human Potential Reengineering" programmes for several banks in Miami, Amsterdam and Geneva.[5]

Sunanda felt that she was not earning enough at Noble House. In August 2004, she moved to Dubai with a Canadian passport, working as a general manager of Best Homes. Later, she joined TECOM investments to work on the International Media Production Zone. She was financially successful, buying two 3-bedroom apartments at Palm Jumeirah, an apartment in Jumeirah Beach Residence and two more apartments in the Executive Towers.[5]

In October 2009, she met Shashi Tharoor at a party organized by the billionaire Sunny Varkey. Tharoor had arrived in Dubai in 2007, with his Canadian wife Christa Giles.[6] Sunanda married Shashi Tharoor in 2010, after he was elected to the Indian Parliament. The couple had a Malayali wedding ceremony in Tharoor's ancestral home at Elavanchery in Kerala, India. This was the third marriage for both of them.[7]

And about what a 'Kashmiri Pandit' is:

The Kashmiri Pandits (also known as Kashmiri Brahmins)[1] are a Brahmin community from the Kashmir Valley,[2][3] a mountainous region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

[...]

The Brahmin Pandits of Kashmir established themselves in the Northern area of India, first in the Rajput and Mughal courts and then in the service of the Dogra rulers of Kashmir. This cohesive community, highly literate and socially elite, were one of the first to discuss and implement social reforms.[2]

[...]

The Kashmiri Pandits had stably constituted approximately 14 to 15 per cent of the population of the valley during Dogra rule (1846–1947). 20 per cent of them had left the Kashmir valley as a consequence of the 1948 Muslim riots and 1950 land reforms,[16] By 1981 the Pandit population amounted to 5 per cent of the total.[17] They began to leave in much greater numbers in the 1990s. According to a number of authors, approximately 100,000 of the total Kashmiri Pandit population of 140,000 left the valley during that decade.[18] Other authors have suggested a higher figure for the exodus, ranging from the entire population of over 150,000,[19] to 190,000 of a total Pandit population of 200,000,[20] to a number as high as 350,000.[21] The Pandits were subjected to numerous indignities and brutalities[22] before they were driven out of Kashmir by militants who reportedly were able to do so with the patronization of the ISI.[22][23] Many of the refugee Kashmiri Pandits have been living in abject conditions in refugee camps of Jammu.[22] The government has reported on the terrorist threats to Pandits still living in the Kashmir region.[23][24]

In 2010, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir noted that 808 Pandit families, comprising 3,445 people, were still living in the Valley and that financial and other incentives put in place to encourage others to return there had been unsuccessful. 219 members of the community had been killed in the region between 1989 and 2004 but none thereafter.[25]

The exiled community had hoped to return after the situation improved. They have not done so because the situation in the Valley remains unstable and they fear a risk to their lives.[26]

[...]

According to Aljazeera, the estimated population of Kashmiri Pandits in the [Kashmir Valley in 2011 was around 2,700-3,400.[3] Those who left the Valley are now scattered throughout India, particularly in Jammu and the National Capital Region. Some emigrated to other countries entirely.[2]

[...]

Kashmiri Hindus are all Saraswat Brahmins, known by their exonym of Pandit. The endonym used within the community is Bhatta.[34] Kashmiri Pandits are chiefly followers of Shiva. Their favourite goddess is Kheer Bhawani. The spring of Kheer Bhawani at the mouth of Sind Valley in Kashmir is considered one of their most important and sacred places. Their branch of Shiva worship is known as Kashmir Saivism. The primary tenet of Kashmir Saivism is that the individual soul is one with the universal spirit, and each person has to experience and discover this for themselves.[35]

[fuser]

Various conspiracy theories are flying around at this moment. Her death is indeed shocking but just to give a background, it started 1-2 days ago with news flying around about an alleged affair between her husband, Shashi Tharoor and Pakistani reporter, Mehr Tarar. She spoke on twitter (in enraged tone) accusing Mehr to be an ISI agent.

Then, she was scheduled for an interview on a news channel but she died yesterday under mysterious circumstances. The couple had booked two separate suites for their stay and she was found dead by her Husband only, who himself is Hospitalized at this moment.

[JRS1]

Mr Tharoor's aide, Abhinav Kumar, had earlier told reporters that she had appeared to be asleep.

"There were no signs of any foul play or any struggle. She had no sign of poisoning or anything," he said.

I wonder what Jack Regan would make of this?

[Rei Murasame]

Update:
'Unnatural sudden death' for Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, say doctors
[youtube]wV_V6B7AXAU[/youtube]

The autopsy of Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, wife of union minister Shashi Tharoor, was conducted by a three-doctor panel at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi today. A preliminary report of the post-mortem examination, which was photographed and filmed, is expected to be submitted to the Sub-Divisional Magistrate soon.

They say that it will take another two days for them to get a result. From what they are willing to say, it seems that she did in actual fact have injuries on her body, but no poison was detected.