A special team of the Chennai Police in Delhi on Sunday arrested two men who had sought to link Chief Minister Edappadi Palaniswami to the robbery attempt at former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s Kodanadu estate in April 2017, The Hindu reported. In a video conversation with a journalist, KV Sayan and Valayar Manoj, who are suspects in the robbery and murder case at the estate, had claimed that their co-accused was in touch with Palaniswami.
Their arrest came based on a complaint filed by All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Rajan Chelappan’s son Satyan, who is an office-bearer of the party, The News Minute reported.
Unidentified men had killed a security guard during the robbery attempt four months after Jayalalithaa’s death. Palaniswami was the chief minister at the time. Two months later, an accountant working at the estate was found dead at his house in Kotagiri.
The Central Crime Branch of the Chennai Police had registered a case against Narada News Chief Executive Officer Mathew Samuel and others after he released a documentary in which Sayan claimed Palaniswami was linked with the robbery attempt at the estate, The Hindu reported. The charges against Samuel and others include “promoting enmity between different groups” and “doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony”.
In a video message on Sunday, however, Samuel alleged that that Sayan and Manoj had been abducted.
On Saturday, Palaniswami had refuted any links to the kidnapping and murder case. “The people who put it out and those behind them will face severe action,” the chief minister had warned. “I have filed a complaint with the police and they have taken it up.”
In the documentary, Sayan had claimed that a man named Kanakaraj had asked him to hire people from outside Tamil Nadu to steal documents from the estate and to hand them over to Palaniswami. Kanakaraj was then killed in a road accident in Salem. Four more persons connected with the robbery had died soon after the incident, unidentified officials from the Coimbatore jail had told Narada News.
Soon after the documentary was released, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam demanded that the chief minister resign from his post.
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