Senior Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor took to Twitter on Thursday night to announce the death of former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. Tharoor paid tributes to Mahajan. Shortly afterwards, however, information came to light that Mahajan was in good health. Mahajan expressed displeasure over Tharoor and the media for giving baseless news about her demise.
Tharoor claimed that he had received information about the death of Sumitra Mahajan from my reliable sources. Former Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Friday reacted to the news of her demise and said, "How could news channels run a report on my so called demise without even cross checking with the Indore administration? My niece refuted Mr. Tharoor on Twitter but what was the urgency in announcing without confirmation?"
Mr Tharoor later said he was relieved that Ms Mahajan is doing fine and said he banked on "a reliable source" for putting out his tweet.
"I am relieved if that is so. I received this from what I thought was a reliable source.... Happy to retract and appalled that anyone would make up such news," he said in a tweet while replying to a message that she was fine.