RK Nagar MLA TTV Dhinakaran, Sasikala's niece Krishnapriya and Jayalalitha’s former personal secretary Poongundran were summoned on 27 December by the one-man judicial commission probing Jayalalithaa's death case. The commission has directed all three to submit any evidence related to Amma’s death or treatment at the earliest.
The probe panel under former Madras High Court judge, Justice A Arumughaswamy, was set up by the E Palaniswamy government.
Jayalalithaa had passed away on 5 December 2016, after spending nearly three months at the Apollo Hospital on Greams Road in Chennai. Members of her political party have raised suspicion over the condition in which the former chief minister was being treated and the reasons for her demise.
Despite the Apollo Hospital issuing a statement on the details of Jayalalitha’s treatment and the illness that cause her death, the EPS government ordered a probe to clear all suspicion.
Even during the recently concluded RK Nagar by-poll, certain posters in Chennai blamed VK Sasikala and members of her family for Amma’s untimely death.
P Vetrivel, a rebel AIADMK leader and TTV’s supporter, had released video footage of J Jayalalithaa supposedly getting treated at Chennai’s Apollo Hospitals. Vetrivel claimed that the video – which was released a day before the RK Nagar bypoll – was shot by Amma’s close aide, VK Sasikala, on the former chief minister’s demand.
On 24 December, VK Sasikala’s nephew, TTV Dhinakaran, won the RK Nagar seat as an independent candidate, defeating the AIADMK candidate, E Madusudhanan, by a huge margin.
(With inputs from NDTV.)
(Breathe In, Breathe Out: Are you finding it tough to breathe polluted air? Join hands with FIT to find #PollutionKaSolution. Send in your suggestions to fit@thequint.com or WhatsApp @ +919999008335)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)