The Delhi police today said they would question Shashi Tharoor's friend and Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar about her online spat with Sunanda Pushkar in the days before the latter's death by poisoning.

An officer said the police would email a questionnaire to Tarar. If she did not cooperate, "We will seek the external affairs ministry's help to record her statement."

Sunanda was found dead in a hotel suite she was sharing with husband Tharoor, a Congress MP and then a minister, in January last year. In her final days, she had posted a series of tweets accusing Tarar of stalking Tharoor. Police sources claimed a distraught Sunanda had told her friends that she suspected an affair.