Shashi Tharoor with wife Sunanda Pushkar. (Photo: Express Archive) Shashi Tharoor with wife Sunanda Pushkar. (Photo: Express Archive)

Union Minister Shashi Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Tharoor Wednesday alleged that her husband was having an “extra-marital affair” with a Pakistan-based journalist and that she would “seek divorce”.

Sunanda Tharoor was speaking to The Indian Express shortly after the minister claimed his Twitter account had been hacked. His claim came after purported controversial tweets were posted from his account and were believed to be addressed to the Pakistan-based journalist.

“Sorry folks, my @Twitter account has been hacked & will be temporarily deactivated. Bear with me while we solve this,” the minister tweeted.

His purported tweets, however, caused his wife to react to them with tweets of her own. In one of them, she said the Pakistani journalist was “stalking” her husband.

“I completely stand by my tweets, I 100 per cent stand by that,” Sunanda Tharoor later told The Indian Express. “That woman pursued and pursued him…men are stupid anyways…for all you know she is a Pakistani agent. Where’s love, where’s loyalty in this world…I am so distraught.”

Sunanda Tharoor said she felt “destroyed as a wife and a woman” over her husband’s “rip-roaring affair” with the Pakistani journalist which she claimed had been going on since April last year.

Sunanda Tharoor also claimed there have been a series of Blackberry Messenger exchanges between her husband and the Pakistani journalist in which, among other things, the possibilities of his divorce with her have also been discussed.

Asked what her next move would be, Sunanda Tharoor said she would seek a divorce from Shashi Tharoor. The Congress minister of state for human resource development and MP from Thiruvananthapuram married the Dubai-based entrepreneur in August 2010.

Shashi Tharoor did not respond to several calls and messages from The Indian Express seeking his comment.

The minister, who has more than 20 lakh followers on Twitter, was in trouble in 2009 after he tweeted that he would travel “cattle class” in solidarity with all our “holy cows” when the Congress was trying to enforce austerity.

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