Last time, the controversy over Twitter cost Tharoor his job as minister of state for external affairs. Will he come out unscathed this time?
Shashi Tharoor, the minister of state for human resource development (HRD) is at the centre of a cross-border tweet war between his wife and a Pakistani woman journalist who have attacked each other. This is the third time the minister has been surrounded in controversy due to Twitter. Last time it cost him his job as minister of state for external affairs, though.
Sunanda Pushkar, the wife of Tharoor, has accused Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar of stalking her husband and trying to ‘break’ her marriage when she was away for treatment for three to four months. Lahore-based Tarar is a mother of a 13-year-old son and an Op-ed writer and a contributor to a Pakistani daily.
Suananda also reportedly alleged that Tharoor was having an ‘extramarital affair’ with the journalist and that she would ‘seek divorce’.
Sunanda said Tharoor and she are a ‘very happily married couple’ and accused the journalist of trying to berate her for some strange reasons. She further alleged that Tarar wanted to have a ‘relationship’ with her husband and asked her to stay away.
As the indecorous controversy surrounding Tharoor escalated amid exchange of some intimate messages, Tarar dismissed the allegations as untrue and said she was totally amused. She said Sunanda has gone out of her mind.
Tarar said she will file a defamation suit against Sunanda for defaming her by alleging she was an agent of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI.
“I have nothing to say to a woman clearly out of her mind. To be called an ISI agent, a stalker…I have nothing to add. Just shows who she is,” she tweeted.
“So I ‘stalk’ on bbm and phone. The last I checked it was a two-way thing, or maybe technology changed while I ’stalked’?
For a woman to trash another woman linking her w/her husband is the lowest form of sickness ever. It’s nauseous. No respect for her marriage,” the journalist said in a series of tweets.
Tarar said she had great respect for Tharoor and that everything about him on her Twitter account was on her timeline. She said Tharoor’s view on politics had always fascinated her. How can somebody stalk on phone? she asked, and added Sunanda’s tweets are crazy.
Sunanda claimed on Twitter that she was posting from her husband’s account, intimate private messages sent to him by Tarar, to show the world “how she is stalking my h ..”
Sunanda later said her information from Pakistan was that the journalist was ‘wired’ to suggest she had links with an intelligence agency.
The Twitter handle of Tharoor, one of the most popular Indian politicians on the networking site, was hacked on Wednesday and some wacky tweets were sent from it to Tarar.
The tweets instantly created a buzz on social media websites.
“Sorry folks, my @Twitter account has been hacked & will be temporarily deactivated. Bear with me while we solve this,” he told his followers in his page.
Most of the tweets from his hacked account were addressed to Tarar, who was taken aback by the flurry of messages from the minister’s handle.
Earlier in 2010, Tharoor found himself in a controversy due to his tweets in reply to Lalit Modi, the then chairperson of Indian Premier League (IPL). This also revealed Tharoor’s relation with Sunanda Pushkar, who at that time had shown substantial interest for her miniscule stake in the Kochi franchisee in the IPL. However, it ended with Tharoor losing his job as minister of external affairs and later getting married with Sunanda.
Before that, Tharoor was attacked by the Opposition when in 2009, he tweeted that he would travel ‘in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows’.
Last year, comenting on the Delhi gang rape case, Tharoor had tweeted that the proposed anti-rape law should be named after the victim, ‘Amanat’. However, this was immediately rejected by Congress saying the opinion of the minister as personal view.
As of today, Tharoor had over 20 lakh followers on Twitter.