Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: In an explosive revelation, senior journalist Nalini Singh has said that Sunanda Pushkar was tensed and crying hard hours before her death.

Notably, the TV journalist was the last person Sunanda called from her mobile.

In an exclusive conversation with Zee Media, Singh said she received a call from Sunanda at 12:10 am on January 17, hours before she was found dead in the room of a five-star hotel here.

“At 12:10 am on January 17, I received a call from Sunanda. She was crying hard and was very tensed. I thought it is because of the then ongoing Twitter spat between her and Pakistani scribe Mehr Tarar. But Sunanda told me that Shashi has deleted messages from his BlackBerry Messenger. She said that as a media person, I should help her in retrieving those messages... But let me tell you that Sunanda discussed about Tarar with me six months back also during a dinner at her place.”

Sunanda was also unhappy because of a meet between her husband Shashi Tharoor and Tarar in Dubai, Singh added.

Sunanda was found dead at Hotel Leela Palace in south Delhi on January 17, just a day after she and Shashi Tharoor claimed they were "happily married" despite an ugly public spat.

Sunanda had alleged an affair between the Pakistani journalist and her husband days before her death in mysterious conditions. The controversy surrounding her death has been revived now.

Dr Sudhir Gupta, the head of forensics department at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), has alleged that he was pressurised to show that Congress MP Shashi Tharoor`s wife Sunanda Pushkar`s death was "natural". The AIIMS administration has denied Dr Gupta`s allegation.

Delhi Police set up a Special Investigation Team a few days after Pushkar`s death to probe the case as it occurred a little over three years after the marriage.

Under the law, every death of a bride within three years of marriage is viewed with suspicion that it may be a case of dowry death.

The 52-year-old Sunanda, who married Tharoor in August 2010, was found sprawled on a bed in room 345 of Hotel Leela Palace. A Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram, it was Thaoor`s third marriage to Sunanda and her third.

A scandal had erupted after tweets posted on Tharoor`s account reportedly spoke of his love to the Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar, who denied she was having an affair with the then Indian minister.

Sunanda had initially threatened to divorce Tharoor, who then tweeted that his Twitter account had been hacked and would be offline for sometime.

However, a furious Sunanda told a newspaper that Tarar could be a Pakistani spy and that she was stalking Thaoor. "And you know how men are. He is flattered by the attention."

"I will not allow this to be done to me. I just can`t tolerate this. I have nothing more to say," she told the newspaper.