Delhi Court dismisses Shashi Tharoor’s plea to bring tweets by Sunanda Pushkar on record

A Delhi Court presided by Special Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar today dismissed a Section 91 CrPC application moved by Shashi Tharoor to bring on record the tweets posted by Sunanda Pushkar through her Twitter handle before her death..Holding that an accused has no right to summon the document under Section 91 of Cr.P.C, the Court said,."By resorting to Section 91 Cr.P.C., the applicant / accused cannot insist on a direction to the Prosecution to first obtain the document and then supply it to him. When the documents are in the public domain as per the submission of the learned Senior Counsel for the applicant / accused, the accused will have the liberty to produce them at an appropriate stage."Judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar.The Section 91 application was by filed Shashi Tharoor in the criminal case pertaining to the mysterious death of Pushkar in January 2014..In August last year, the Delhi Police had pressed for framing of charges under Sections 498A and 306 or alternatively under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code against Tharoor..It was Tharoor's case that Pushkar's Twitter timeline ought to be brought on record and made part of the case material in order to ascertain her state of mind before her death as it would have a "crucial bearing" on the issue of his discharge or framing of charge..It was submitted that even at the stage of charge, the Court could consider the documents of "sterling quality" in favour of the accused and same could not be withheld from the Court..The application asserted that the tweets indicated that Pushkar was not having any “suicidal ideations”, and was rather she was in a positive frame of mind with respect to her relationship with Tharoor..During the course of arguments, counsel for Tharoor, Senior Advocate Vikas Pahwa, had specifically referred to certain tweets which were made by Pushkar on January 17, 2014 at 4.46 am as well as on January 16, 2014, i.e. hours before her death..In her tweets, Pushkar had remarked that Tharoor and she were 'happily married' and had also come defence of her husband in connection with the Mehr Tarar controversy..Opposing the request to bring Pushkar's tweets on record, the Delhi Police had argued that the application was vague and was an effort to stall the trial in the case..Delhi Police, which is being represented by Public Prosecutor Atul Srivastava, had also submitted that it has no record related to Pushkar’s tweets in terms of the documents supplied under Section 173 CrPC..After considering the rival contentions, the Court opined that Tharoor’s contention that Pushkar’s Twitter Account reflected a different state of mind was “a matter of evaluation of the evidence” and the same could not be undertaken so meticulously at the stage of charge..Addressing concerns of information being withheld from the Court and the accused, the Court added,"In my view, if these tweets accounts are in the public domain, the accused can produce them at the appropriate stage. I have no reason to doubt that the prosecution made best efforts to extract the contents of the Laptop and mobile phone of the deceased and whatever could be retrieved has been supplied to the applicant / accused under Section 207 Cr.P.C.".The Court held that an accused had no right to summon the document under Section 91 of CrPC and opined that at the stage of charge, it could not undertake a "roving inquiry". .It clarified that at this stage, it only needed look into the documents of the Prosecution to ascertain whether a prima facie case was made out or not..In view of the above, the Court concluded that the application was liable to be dismissed. The matter would be heard next on Februray 24..Read the Order: