NEW DELHI, July 7 (Xinhua) -- An Indian court Saturday granted regular bail to the country's former junior Foreign Minister Shashi Tharoor in his wife's mysterious death case.
Tharoor -- facing abetment charges for the death of his 51-year-old wife Sunanda Pushkar at a five-star hotel in Delhi on January 17, 2014 -- was given anticipatory bail by the court in the Indian capital on Thursday.
"The court Saturday converted the anticipatory bail to regular bail after Tharoor appeared before it and furnished a bail bond of 100,000 rupees (about 1,500 U.S. dollars). He can't be arrested in the case," a lawyer representing Tharoor told the media.
Tharoor, also a senior lawmaker of India's main opposition Congress party, is the only suspect in his wife's death, whose body was found at the hotel suite two days after claiming on social media that her husband had been having an illicit affair with a Pakistani journalist.
In a 3,000-page chargesheet, the Delhi Police had not only pressed abetement charges on the two-time parliamentarian from the southern Indian state of Kerala, but also claimed that he had subjected his wife to cruelty.
The former Minister, also a former career international diplomat, insists he is innocent and terms the charges "preposterous and baseless".
