A much-talked about romance and a fairy tale wedding...
Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar were one of the most talked about and IT couple in social and political circles...
A sudden, mysterious death.
Sunanda Pushkar found dead in suite number 345 of Leela hotel in the Capital...
The death sent shock waves all around and conspiracy theories flew thick and fast..
Just a day before her death, Sunanda had a Twitter spat with Pakistani journalist Mehr Tara over her alleged affair with Sashi Tharoor. They both denied any relationship...
A number of well-known journalists, including Nalini Singh, later recalled their conversations with Sunanda just before her death, where she allegedly spoke about troubles in marriage...
Autopsy revealed injury marks on her body and traces of anti-anxiety drug Aprazolam
Fingers were pointed at Tharoor after AIIMS doctor Sudhir Gupta alleged pressure to alter the autopsy report...
While several TV channels hounded Shashi Tharoor, he maintained that the death was an accident...
The then Delhi Police chief BS Bassi set the cat among pigeons by describing Sunanda's death as murder...
Political rivals jumped in to target Tharoor. BJP's Subramanian Swamy moved court for a SIT probe, but Delhi high court rejected his plea calling it a "Political Interest Litigation".
Finally, after 3 years of conspiracy theories and TV hounding of Tharoor, Delhi Police filed a 3,000 page chargesheet charging the Congress leader with abetment to suicide and cruelty
After three years, Tharoor has been cleared of charges by a Delhi court. A relieved Tharoor thanked the court and called the past seven and a half years an "absolute torture".
Hounded by a certain section of media, Tharoor sued Arnab Goswami of Republic TV for its reportage in the case...
Later, he also sued senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad for calling him a "murder accused".
What happens to these defamation cases after clean chit to Tharoor from court? Can TV channels and anchors who ran primetime campaigns against individuals, labelling them in the most nasty terms, be penalised? Will they learn any lessons from this?