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Sunanda Pushkar

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 182.65.154.201 (talk) at 15:33, 19 January 2014 (Date of birth of Sunanda pushkar indicated as July 27 by Mr Shashi Tharoor in this article http://tharoor.in/news/sunanda-is-the-one-who-pushed-me-to-finish-the-book-shashi-tharoor/). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Sunanda Pushkar
File:Sunanda Pushkar at Buddh Circuit, Oct 2013.jpg
Born
Sunanda Dass

(1962-07-27)27 July 1962
Died17 January 2014(2014-01-17) (aged 52)
New Delhi
CitizenshipCanadian[1]
Spouse(s)Sanjay Raina (1988)
Sujith Menon (1991-1997)
Shashi Tharoor (2010-2014) (her death)
ChildrenShiv Menon

Sunanda Pushkar (1 January 1962 – 17 January 2014) was an Indo-Canadian businessperson and the wife of Indian minister 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]

Early life

Sunanda Pushkar was born in a Kashmiri family of landlords and army officers native to Bomai. She was the only daughter of Lt Col(retd) Poshkar Nath Dass and Jaya Dass. Her father had retired from the army in 1983. She had two brothers, one of whom works for a bank; the other is in the Army.[3] The family moved from Bomai to Jammu in 1990, after their house was set afire by militants.[4] 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 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.[5][6]

Business career

In India, Pushkar had briefly worked as a receptionist at the Centaur Lake View hotel in Srinagar, after doing a course in hotel management.[7] After coming to Dubai, she started a profitable event management business called Expressions, and became well-known for her networking with sponsors and artists for fashion shows. Her company organized several model shows for product launches, featuring 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 second husband Sujith Menon 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 returned to India, and died in an accident in Delhi in March 1997.[5][6]

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 back to Dubai, he had developed a communication disorder. She left Bozell Prime to spend time with her son, and later joined Ravissant. Struggling as a small-time event manager in Dubai, she 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, started using "Pushkar" (an alternative spelling of her father's name) 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.[5][6]

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.[5] 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.[6]

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 for 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.[6]

Return to India

In October 2009, Sunanda Pushkar met Shashi Tharoor at a party organized by the billionaire Sunny Varkey.[7] After their first meeting, Sunanda was seen often at Tharoor's side in social gatherings.[8] She left TECOM Investments in mid-March 2010.[9] 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.[10]

IPL controversy

When she was dating Shashi Tharoor, Sunanda started getting media attention in India, as it became known that she had been given sweat equity worth ₹ 70 crores (700 million) in Rendezvous Sports World. In 2010, the company bid for the IPL cricket team Kochi Tuskers Kerala, which represented Tharoor's native state Kerala. The company was founded in 2009, while Sunanda Pushkar was made a Director of the company on 25 February 2010, just 18 days before the IPL bid. There were allegations that Shashi Tharoor had misused his ministerial position to ask for a free stake in the company, and that Sunanda was acting as a proxy for him. The controversy ultimately resulted in Shashi Tharoor's resignation as a minister. In her defence, Sunanda argued that she had been invited to join Rendezvous because of her "extensive international experience as a business executive, marketing manager and entrepreneur". She also stated that she had been given a similar offer by Karim Morani of Kolkata Knight Riders in the past.[11][12] In April 2010, Sunanda announced that she had relinquished her stake in the company following the controversy. However, she continued to hold the stake, after was told that there is no provision under the BCCI's IPL rules for surrender of shares at that stage.[13] Later in 2014, after the Twitter controversy (see below) and shortly before her death, Sunanda stated that she had taken upon herself "the crimes of this man [Shashi Tharoor] during IPL".[14]

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.[14] Later, she stated that she did not want to go public about the matter, especially in an election year.[15] 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.[16]

Death

On 17 Jan, 2014, a day after the Twitter controversy, Sunanda was found dead in room number 345 of The Leela Palace hotel in the Chanakyapuri area of New Delhi. Shashi Tharoor discovered her body, when she did not wake up from her sleep in the evening. He informed the Police, who recovered the dead body from the hotel and sent it for postmortem. According to initial reports, Sunanda was suspected to have committed suicide. The later reports stated that the cause of death was unnatural; the doctors at AIIMS gave a preliminary autopsy report that revealed injury marks on her body. The doctors said that these injuries may or may not be the cause of death.[17] The autopsy indicated that she died of drug overdose, most likely a combination of sedatives, other strong medicines and probably alcohol.[18] Her body was cremated at Lodhi crematorium in South Delhi.[19]

Doctors at KIMS Hospital Trivandrum, who had diagnosed her few days earlier say that she did not have serious health problems.[20] However, Sunanda had hinted about her death, hours before her body was recovered from the Hotel.[21]

References

  1. ^ Allana, Alia (18 April 2010). "Suddenly SUNANDA". The Indian Express. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  2. ^ a b "Who is Sunanda Pushkar? Her background and many scandals". FirstPost. 16 January 2014.
  3. ^ Jammu to Dubai to Delhi: Who is Sunanda Pushkar whose stake is worth Rs 70 crore?New Indian express
  4. ^ "Sunanda Pushkar's father pleads that his daughter be left alone". Daily News and Analysis.
  5. ^ a b c d Vrinda Gopinath (26 April 2010). "Got A Girl, Named Sue". Outlook.
  6. ^ a b c d e Shoma Chaudhury (1 May 2010). "The Parable Of The Vamp". Tehelka. 7 (17).
  7. ^ a b Abhishek Dubey (2011). "The Sunanda Pushkar Story". Indian Premier League Story. Pearson Education India. pp. 13–23. ISBN 978-81-317-5800-7.
  8. ^ "Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor's journey: Sales manager in Dubai to member of Delhi's power club". Financial Express. 18 January 2014.
  9. ^ "Sunanda left her job right before IPL bid". India Today / Mail Today. 16 April 2010.
  10. ^ "Shashi Tharoor weds Sunanda Pushkar". NDTV. 22 August 2010.
  11. ^ "I am not a proxy for Tharoor: Sunanda Pushkar". NDTV. 14 April 2010.
  12. ^ "Sunanda Pushkar a last minute inclusion in IPL bidders group". Oneindia.in. 18 April 2010. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  13. ^ Pradeep Thakur & Josy Joseph (17 July 2010). "Sunanda continues to hold 19% stake in Rendezvous". The Times of India.
  14. ^ a b Sruthijith KK (16 January 2014). "Border love row: Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda says she posted messages of Pak journo Mehr on his Twitter handle".
  15. ^ "Pushkar swings from rage to defiance to caution". The Times of India. 17 January 2014.
  16. ^ "Joint statement by Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor on 16th January, 2014". Facebook. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  17. ^ Sunanda Pushkar died an unnatural sudden death say AIIMS doctors; body cremated
  18. ^ Drug overdose may have killed Sunanda Pushkar: Autopsy
  19. ^ Sunanda Pushkar's last rites at Lodhi Crematorium
  20. ^ "Sunanda did not have serious health problems: Doctors". Times of India. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  21. ^ "Sunanda Pushkar predicted Death 12 hours before her Death". Biharprabha News. Retrieved 17 January 2014.

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