New Delhi: A Twitter war has broken out between HRD minister of state Shashi Tharoor, his wife Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor and Pakistani columnist Mehr Tarar. The war of tweets, that has set the social media abuzz, also saw Ms Pushkar allege that Ms Tarar was an “ISI agent”.
In an attempt to quash rumours of an alleged affair, the controversy-prone minister issued a joint statement with his wife Sunanda saying they were “happily married”, but “distressed by some unauthorised tweets.”
It read: “We wish to stress that we are happily married and intend to remain that way. Sunanda has been ill and hospitalised this week and is seeking rest. We would be grateful if the me-dia respects our privacy.”
The Twitter row had erupted on Wednesday after the exchange of some messages involving the three, some of which were intimate in nature.
Ms Pushkar has accused Ms Tarar of “stalking” her husband and trying to “break” her marriage. Ms Pushkar also alleged Ms Tarar wanted to have a “re-lationship” with her husband, and asked her to stay away. Ms Tarar denied the charge, and has reportedly threatened to file a defamation suit against her.
Ms Tarar dismissed the allegations as untrue, and said she was amused. “To be called an ISI agent, a sta-lker... I’ve nothing to add.
Just shows who she is... So I ‘stalk’ on bbm and phone. The last I checked it was a two-way thing, or maybe technology changed while I ‘stalked’?” she tweeted.
Scribe trashes Sunanda
Pak journalist Mehr Tarar then added: “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 statement by the couple added: “Various distorted accounts of comments allegedly made by Sunanda have appe-ared in the press. It appears that some personal and private comments responding to the-se unauthorised tweets — comments that were not intended for publication — have been misrepresented and led to some erroneous conclusions.”
Ms Tarar said she had great respect for Tharoor and that everything about him on her Twitter account was on her timeline. She said she met Tharoor for the first time for an interview. “It was a pleasure to meet him. His views as a politician fascinated me,” she wrote. See blow-by-blow tweets in box alongside
