VK Sasikala, a close aide of J Jayalalithaa, said on Tuesday that she was ready to face any investigation into the death of the former Tamil Nadu chief minister, The Hindu reported. Sasikala’s statement came after an inquiry panel named her as one of the persons, who were “at fault” for Jayalalithaa’s death.
In a three-page statement released after the panel’s report came to public domain, Sasikala said that people will no longer support those who did not have the courage to take on Jayalalithaa politically and are now politicising her death.
“People have realised that there are no issues regarding the death of Amma,” the former general secretary of the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam wrote, according to The Hindu.
Jayalalithaa died in Chennai on December 5, 2016, a day after she suffered a cardiac arrest. She had been hospitalised for more than two months before her death.
The Tamil Nadu government set up the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission in September 2017 after state ministers made contradicting claims about their access to Jayalalithaa while she was hospitalised.
The report tabled in the state Assembly on Tuesday, stated that Sasikala, doctor KS Sivakumar, former state Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan and former state Health Minister C Vijayabaskar were “at fault” for Jayalalithaa’s death.
The report also alleged that “under some pressure”, two doctors from Chennai’s Apollo Hospital had postponed Jayalalithaa’s visit abroad for treatment, even though United States-based doctor Samin Sharma and United Kingdom-based expert Richard Beale had convinced the former chief minister had been convinced to travel.
In her statement, Sasikala denied having interfered with Jayalalithaa’s treatment in any manner.
“I did not study medicine to provide my views on the matter,” she said, according to The Indian Express. “The medical team decided on what kind of medicines and procedures should be administered.”
She argued that the Apollo Hospital was not an ordinary establishment that would carry out treatment based on her directions.
Sasikala also dismissed the commission’s opinion that ties between her and Jayalalithaa had deteriorated since 2012 were “absurd”. The commission had overreached its limits to make such assumptions, Sasikala said.
“How did they arrive at such a conclusion?” her statement read, according to The Indian Express. “Who informed them? The late Puratchithalaivi [great leader] would not have told them. Then what is the ulterior motive behind making such a false, absurd remark?”
Sasikala had been removed as general secretary of the AIADMK and expelled from the party in 2017. The move came after she was convicted in a disproportionate assets case in February that year.
There has been speculation about Sasikala entering politics again, once she was released from jail in January this year after serving a four-year sentence in the case. In February, she had moved a Chennai court challenging her removal as AIADMK general secretary.
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