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Sasikala’s nephew Dinakaran attacks Modi, Jaitley over I-T raid on Poes Garden
Sidelined AIADMK leader says chief minister E Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam instigating Central government to target family members and friends of Sasikala
Rebel AIADMK leader TTV Dinakaran on Saturday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and finance minister Arun Jaitley of orchestrating a series of Income Tax raids including a late-night search at the Chennai residence of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
Dinakaran, the nephew of jailed AIADMK leader VK Sasikala, also blamed chief minister E Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam of instigating the Central government to target family members and friends of Sasikala.
Dinakaran’s outburst came barely hours after investigators completed an hours-long search at Veda Nilayam, the iconic residence of Jayalalithaa in the capital’s upscale Poes Garden locality.
Sasikala and her family and business associates are under scanner for suspect tax evasion and money laundering.
State fisheries minister D Jayakumar, however, denied the government’s hand in the raid on Friday night.
“We had nothing to do with the raids on the residence of Amma,” he said, referring to Jayalalithaa with the term ‘mother’ used by her followers. “The raids, however, are very painful,” he added.
Dinakaran described the raid as an “insult” to Jayalalithaa and said Modi and Jaitley were misusing the Income Tax department and the Enforcement Directorate to destroy Sasikala’s family, derisively known as the Mannagurdi Mafia in the state.
“We know who is behind all these raids,” Dinakaran told reporters in Tuticorin, a town in the southern tip of Tamil Nadu, about 600 km from Chennai.
“The people are with us and they will teach the traitors a lesson,” he added, in an apparent reference to Palaniswami and Panneerselvam with whom he is engaged in a bitter battle for control of the ruling AIADMK.
He also questioned why Modi did not visit Jayalalithaa during her long hospitalisation late last year but found time to meet her rival and DMK leader, Karunanidhi, in Chennai last week.
The raids, however, did not evoke much response in the state unlike in the past when any action against Jayalalithaa met with protests, sometimes even violence by her supporters.
Dinakaran led a motley group of slogan-shouting supporters outside Jaya’s residence on Friday night as the search was on.
An IT official said Sasikala could be questioned over some of the recovered items, believed to be a laptop and a deskto computer and a few external storage drives which she had allegedly used when she shared the Poes Garden residence with the former chief minister. Sasikala is lodged at the Parapparana Agrahara prison in Bengaluru.
Friday’s raid was sanctioned by a court and was based on information provided by relatives and associates of Sasikala after raids on their business and residential premises last week.
Among those questioned was Vivek Jayaraman, the CEO of Jaya TV, now owned by Sasikala.
The government stepped up security around Jaya’s residence on Saturday with four pickets put up near her residence with nearly 100 police personnel guarding Veda Nilayam.
Hours before the raid, Sasikala’s husband, M Natarajan, was admitted to a hospital on Friday for suspected complications following his recent kidney and liver transplant operations.
The Madras high court on Friday upheld a two-year jail term to Natarajan for evading taxes for a luxury car he imported in 1994.
Last week, in one of the biggest IT raids in the country, 187 locations belonging to Sasikala, her relatives, friends and business associates in four states were searched.
Among the premises raided were of Jaya TV and Namadhu MGR, both AIADMK propaganda machines now under control of Sasikala.
