Sunanda Pushkar

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Sunanda Pushkar
Sunanda Pushkar at Buddh Circuit, Oct 2013.jpg
Born Sunanda Dass
1 January 1962
Died 17 January 2014 (aged 52)
New Delhi
Citizenship Canadian[1]
Spouse(s) Sanjay Raina(1988-divorced)
Sujith Menon(1991-1997)
Shashi Tharoor(2010 - 17 January 2014 (her death))[2]
Children Shiv Menon
Sunanda Pushkar (1 January 1962 – 17 January 2014) was an Indo-Canadian Entrepreneur, Businesswoman and the wife of Indian Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor. She was a sales manager in the Dubai-based TECOM Investments, and a co-owner of the India-based Rendezvous Sports World.[3]

Early life

Sunanda Pushkar was born in a Kashmiri family of landlords and Indian Army officers native to Bomai. She was the only daughter of Lt. Col. Pushkar Nath Dass and Jaya Dass. Her father PN Dass retired from the army in 1983. She had two brothers, one of whom works for a bank; the other is in the Army.[4] The family moved out of Bomai in 1990, after their house was set afire by militants.[5] She graduated from the Government College for Women in Srinagar, where she studied during 1986-88.[3]

Business career

In Dubai, Sunanda started a profitable event management business called Expressions, and became well-known for her networking with sponsors and artists for fashion shows. The company organized several model shows for product launches. Sunanda worked with 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 died in an accident in Delhi in March 1997.[6][7]
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 to Dubai, he had developed a communication disorder, and had stopped talking. She left Bozell Prime to spend time with her son, and later joined Ravissant. Struggling as a small-time event manager in Dubai, Sunanda 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, she started using her father's name "Pushkar" 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.[6][7]
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.[6] 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.[7]
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 of Best Homes. Later, she joined TECOM investments to work on the International Media Production Zone.[8] 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.[7]

Personal life

While studying at the Government College, she married a fellow Kashmiri Pandit and a hotel management graduate Sanjay Raina.[9][10] The couple divorced in 1988. Subsequently, Sunanda went to Dubai in 1989 and married Sujith Menon in 1991.[11] Their son Shiv was born in November 1992. In October 2009, she met Shashi Tharoor at a party organized by the billionaire Sunny Varkey. Tharoor had arrived in Dubai in 2007, with his Canadian wife Christa Giles.[12] Sunanda married Shashi Tharoor in 2010, after he was elected to the Indian Parliament.[13] The couple had a Malayali wedding ceremony in Tharoor's ancestral home at Elavanchery in Kerala, India. This was the third marriage for both of them.[14]

Controversies

IPL controversy

When she was dating Shashi Tharoor, Sunanda started getting media attention in India, as it became known that she had been gifted sweat equity worth INR 70 crores (700 million) in Rendezvous Sports World. The company was founded in 2009. In 2010, it bid for the IPL cricket team Kochi Tuskers Kerala, which represented Tharoor's native state Kerala. Sunanda Pushkar was made a Director of the company on 25 February 2010, just 18 days before the IPL bid. In March 2010, her 70-crore equity was sold for INR 1530 crores. 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.[15][16] 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.[17]

Twitter Controversy

On 15 January 2014, Pushkar published from her husband Shashi Tharoor's Twitter account, messages allegedly sent by a Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar to Tharoor, proclaiming Tarar's love for Tharoor. Pushkar's tweets addressing Tarar as an ISI agent stalking Tharoor snowballed into a full-blown Twitter war, with Tarar responding to Pushkar's tweets and threatening to sue Pushkar for calling her an ISI agent. Tharoor tried to downplay the incident by stating that his account had been hacked, which Pushkar denied saying she had only tweeted from Tharoor's Twitter account. [18][19] The controversy subsided when the couple issued a joint statement stating that they were Happily Married.[20]

Death

On 17 January 2014, a day after the Twitter, Sunanda was found dead in room number 345 of The Leela Palace Hotel in the Chanakyapuri area of New Delhi. Her husband Shashi Tharoor discovered it when she did not wake up from sleep in the evening. He informed the Police, which recovered the dead body from the hotel and sent it for postmortem. According to initial reports, the cause of Sunanda's death was unnatural and seemed to be unknown. Doctors at AIIMS gave a preliminary autopsy report that revealed injury marks on her body. Doctors said that these injuries may or may not be the cause of death. Her body was cremated at Lodhi crematorium in South Delhi.[21][22]
// Doctors at KIMS Hospital Trivandrum, who had diagnosed her earlier this week say that she did not have serious health problems.[23] However, Sunanda had hinted about her death, hours before her body was recovered from Hotel.[24]

References

  1. Jump up ^ Allana, Alia (18 April 2010). "Suddenly SUNANDA". The Indian Express. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  2. Jump up ^ "Sunanda Pushkar Found Dead At Leela Hotel In Delhi". Mumbai Voice.
  3. ^ Jump up to: a b "Who is Sunanda Pushkar? Her background and many scandals". FirstPost. 2014-01-16.
  4. Jump up ^ Jammu to Dubai to Delhi: Who is Sunanda Pushkar whose stake is worth Rs 70 crore?New Indian express
  5. Jump up ^ "Sunanda Pushkar's father pleads that his daughter be left alone". Daily News and Analysis.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c Vrinda Gopinath (2010-04-26). "Got A Girl, Named Sue". Outlook.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Shoma Chaudhury (2010-05-01). "The Parable Of The Vamp". Tehelka 7 (17).
  8. Jump up ^ http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/who-was-sunanda-pushkar/1/338430.html
  9. Jump up ^ http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/Sunanda's+ex-hubby+says+he+has+'moved+on'/1/93064.html
  10. Jump up ^ http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-sunanda-pushkar-and-mdash-kashmiri-village-girl-who-made-it-big-in-life-1952832
  11. Jump up ^ www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265098
  12. Jump up ^ Abhishek Dubey (2011). Indian Premier League Story. Pearson Education India. pp. 34–. ISBN 978-81-317-5800-7.
  13. Jump up ^ http://www.ndtv.com/article/people/sunanda-pushkar-tharoor-a-profile-472462
  14. Jump up ^ "Shashi Tharoor weds Sunanda Pushkar". NDTV. 2010-08-22.
  15. Jump up ^ "I am not a proxy for Tharoor: Sunanda Pushkar". NDTV. 2010-04-14.
  16. Jump up ^ "Sunanda Pushkar a last minute inclusion in IPL bidders group". Oneindia.in. 18 April 2010. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  17. Jump up ^ Pradeep Thakur & Josy Joseph (2010-07-17). "Sunanda continues to hold 19% stake in Rendezvous". The Times of India.
  18. Jump up ^ Shashi Tharoor caught between ‘blonde’ and ‘ISI agent’
  19. Jump up ^ Pushkar swings from rage to defiance to caution
  20. Jump up ^ "Joint statement by Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor on 16th January, 2014". Facebook. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  21. Jump up ^ [1]
  22. Jump up ^ Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor found dead in Delhi hotel
  23. Jump up ^ "Sunanda did not have serious health problems: Doctors". Times of India. Retrieved 18 January 2014.
  24. Jump up ^ "Sunanda Pushkar predicted Death 12 hours before her Death". Biharprabha News. Retrieved 17 January 2014.