Sunanda Pushkar: Injury marks found on body of Indian politician’s wife

Ms Pushkar's body was discovered in a luxury hotel room by her husband Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor and his wife Sunanda Pushkar at their wedding reception in New Delhi in 2010 (AP) (AP)

It was a private matter that ended in a very public tragedy, a “sudden and unnatural death” in a Delhi hotel room.

Doctors released their first findings today from an examination of the body of Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of an Indian government minister, Shashi Tharoor. Before she was found dead in a room at the Leela Hotel in Delhi on Friday, she appeared to have accused her husband of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist.

Dr Sudhir Kumar Gupta, one of the staff at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi, who carried out the examination, said: “There were certain injury marks on the body of Sunanda Pushkar, but the nature of these cannot be revealed.”

Ms Pushkar was found dead by Mr Tharoor in one of two rooms the couple had rented in the hotel while their Delhi home was being renovated.

The discovery of her body followed a bizarre series of events that began on Wednesday when Ms Pushkar apparently sent messages from Mr Tharoor’s Twitter account, claiming they had come from a Pakistani journalist who was having an affair with her husband. That night she told local media she was planning to divorce Mr Tharoor. On Thursday, she continued the accusations against the journalist Mehr Tarar and gave more interviews, during which she appeared confused.

Ms Tarar denied the claims, and Ms Pushkar and Mr Tharoor later issued what was described as a joint statement in which they said “unauthorised messages” had been sent from their Twitter accounts and that they were still happily married.

One of Ms Pushkar’s final messages on social media suggested she had been treated at the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences. Officials there said that while she had visited recently, the minister’s wife was not diagnosed with “any serious medical condition which might have caused her immediate death”.

Mr Tharoor was forced to resign from his first ministerial post in 2010 amid controversy over his involvement in bids for a cricket team. He returned to government and was appointed minister for human resources in 2012. On Friday, he was admitted to hospital with chest pains.

Today, television footage showed Mr Tharoor leaving the hospital where the post-mortem was carried out. Full results are due on Monday.