Apollo Hospitals has informed the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission that CCTV footage of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s stay at its hospital in Chennai in 2016 has been overwritten, The Economic Times reported on Wednesday.
Jayalalithaa was admitted to the hospital allegedly for severe dehydration on September 22, 2016. She died of cardiac arrest on December 5. The commission was set up in September 2017 to inquire into the circumstances leading to her hospitalisation and the treatment provided to her till her death.
In response to the commission’s letter dated September 6 requesting CCTV footage, the hospital, in a short communique sent five days later, said its servers store data for only a month after which they are overwritten.
“We have said we are unable to produce the footage asked for, in some specific areas, because it is stored in a server and it is overwritten every 30 days,” said legal counsel for Apollo Hospitals Maimoona Badsha. “Since, it is well over a year, we do not have the footage with us.”
In March, Apollo Hospitals’ Chairperson Dr Prathap Reddy said all CCTV cameras in the hospital had been turned off during the former chief minister’s 75-day stay at the facility. When asked about Reddy’s statement, Badsha said “that is a different issue”, IANS reported.
On September 7, the hospital’s Chief Operating Officer Subbiah Viswanathan appeared before the commission and said all CCTV cameras were working and were switched off on the request of a government official, reported India Today. Subbiah has been summoned to appear before the commission on September 25.
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