Prominent Indian politician and former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor was on Monday charged with abetting the suicide of his wife Sunanda Pushkar, lawyers said.
Tharoor, a lawmaker from the opposition Indian National Congress, was also charged with cruelty in marriage, according to the charges filed by Delhi police in court, said Ishkaran Singh Bhandari, who is a petitioner in the case.
Pushkar, 51 was found dead at a luxury hotel in New Delhi in January 2014, days after she publicly accused her husband of having an affair with a Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar.
Mehr Tarar, a Lahore based journalist, worked with Daily Times in past.
Tharoor, a former UN under secretary general for communications and public information, called the charges “preposterous” and said he would contest them vigorously.
“No one who knew Sunanda believes she would ever have committed suicide, let alone abetment on my part,” he wrote on Twitter.
“In October 2017, the law officer made a statement in the Delhi High Court that they have not found anything against anyone and now in six months they say that I have abetted a suicide. Unbelievable!,” he wrote.
In 2015, police questioned Tharoor on the alleged marital discord.
Police first claimed Pushkar was poisoned and had opened a murder investigation without naming any suspect. Her death was subsequently treated as suicide.
Tharoor, who quit the UN to join politics in 2007, married Pushkar in 2010. The couple frequently featured in the society pages of the Indian press.
The trial court will hold the next hearing on May 24, according to media reports.