CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has appointed retired Madras high court judge Justice A Arumughaswamy to probe the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa. The order came a month after chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami had announced that his government would set up an inquiry panel to probe into the circumstances leading to the demise of Jayalalithaa.
Meanwhile, forest minister Dindigul C Sreenivasan while addressing a meeting said that some AIADMK ministers lied about the health of Jayalalithaa when she was in hospital. He said that no minister was allowed to meet her in the hospital, and hence no one knew the reality. “We told lies that she (Jayalalithaa) had idlis and chutney. But friends, the truth is that nobody was allowed to meet her. I apologise before you for telling such lies in the past. In fact, we all told lies about Amma.”
“Dignitaries who visited the hospital were at best offered chairs to sit on the first floor. Nobody was permitted to go beyond that. (Jayalalithaa's room was in the second floor.) After a brief chat, all of them left. Nobody saw Amma,” said Sreenivasan. Governor C Vidyasagar Rao and many others, including DMK working president M K Stalin, were stopped much before Jayalalithaa's room in Apollo Hospital, Sreenivasan said. A week ago, he had accused Jaya aide Sasikala and her family of maintaining “intriguing secrecy” about Jayalalithaa's treatment in hospital.
Incidentally, in March this year, the same minister had given a clean chit to Sasikala and her family members saying there was nothing suspicious about Jayalalithaa's treatment or death. The minister said they indulged in disinformation about Jayalalithaa as they did not want the party's secrets to leak. “Even if there are differences within family, we speak in hushed tones so that nobody get to know about our problems. We didn't want the party's secrets to leak,” Sreenivasan said.
