Shashi Tharoor

India — Former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor married girlfriend Sunanda Pushkar Sunday, months after the couple were the focus of a cricket team ownership scandal that saw him quit the Indian government.

The couple were married in the presence of close relatives in Tharoor's ancestral home in the southern state of Kerala, a witness said.

The suave, debonair Tharoor, who spent almost three decades in the United Nations before quitting in 2007, was elected to the Indian parliament in 2009.

He was made junior foreign minister but had served barely a year before he was forced to resign over revelations that Pushkar had been given a free stake in a new Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket franchise.

Tharoor helped put together the consortium that bought the team in Kerala, and opposition politicians suggested the free stake was a kickback for his "services".
Tharoor staunchly denied any wrongdoing and said he was stepping down with a "clear conscience" to avoid any embarrassment for the government.

The revelation of Pushkar's free stake was leaked on the microblogging site Twitter by the then IPL chief Lalit Modi.

The move backfired, with the finance ministry launching a wide-ranging tax probe into the IPL and its franchise owners.

Modi was suspended and is now the focus of an inquiry into allegations of corruption, indiscipline and money-laundering in the IPL.