Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 10 (IT): Congress leader and MP Shashi Tharoor has filed a case of criminal defamation against Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad for calling him a "murder accused". The case was filed in a Thiruvananthapuram court.

Prasad had made those comments at a press conference on October 28. During that press conference, Prasad, according to a legal notice previously sent by Tharoor, had said: "Shashi Tharoor who is accused in a murder case..."

Prasad had said this while demanding that Tharoor apologise for comparing PM Narendra Modi with a scorpion sitting on a Shiv Linga (Tharoor had in fact spoken about an old news article where an "unnamed RSS source" had compared PM Modi with a scorpion sitting on a Shiv Linga).

A few days later, Tharoor sent Prasad a legal notice, demanding that Ravi Shankar Prasad apologise for calling him a murder accused.

"When India's Law Minister falsely invents a murder case against a political opponent, what hope for justice & democracy?" Tharoor had tweeted then while revealing that he had sent a legal notice for defamation to Prasad.

Prasad had not specified what "murder case" he was talking about, but the reference was amply clear: The death of Shashi Tharoor's wife Sunanda Pushkar, who was found dead inside a luxury hotel room in mysterious circumstances in 2014.

The Delhi Police, which is investigating Pushkar's death, has charged Tharoor with cruelty and abetment of suicide.