Members of the Sasikala family are on a mission to put all the blame for the recent Income-Tax raids in their houses and business establishments on former Chief Minister late J Jayalalithaa.
The charge made by VK Divakaran, Sasikala's brother, against Jayalalithaa on Saturday at Mannargudi is a prelude to the change of strategy which has been adopted by the members of the clan, whose meteoric rise in wealth making use of their closeness to Jayalalithaa is a folklore in Tamil Nadu.
"When she was alive Jayalalithaa made use of Sasikala to get all her orders executed. Sasikala did whatever she was told to do and did not expect anything in return. But Jayalalithaa left my sister without any safeguards after her death and that's why she and we, her family members face all problems like the Income-Tax raids," said Divakaran.
The latest stance of Divakaran is seen as a move by the members of the Sasikala family to make Jayalalithaa a scapegoat and put all the blames for the disproportionate asset case on her shoulders to extricate "Chinnamma" (as Sasikala is addressed by her close associates) from the case.
A Bangalore court had sentenced them and Jayalalithaa in September 2014 for four years imprisonment in the disproportionate asset case filed by senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy.
Though the Karnataka High Court had quashed the trial court verdict, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court verdict in February 2017. Since Jayalalithaa had passed away in December 2016, she was saved from the ignominy of serving jail term.
Now that Jayalalithaa is no more, the effort of the Sasikala family is to put all the blames on Jayalalithaa and portray her as the villain behind all the misdeeds that took place during her tenure as Chief Minister. This has shocked Jayalalithaa loyalists in the AIADMK as well as some of the political commentators who have been closely following the AIADMK for decades.
The new accusation levelled by Dinkaran, who is heading one faction of the AIADMK, against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is to be seen in this background. "The raids in our families and the Pose Garden were executed at the instance of Modi and Jaitley. Prime Minister Modi called on the DMK chief M Karunanidhi recently. But he did not have the decency to call on Jayalalithaa while she was in the hospital," charged Dinakaran while speaking to reporters post the Veda Nilayam raids by the I-T sleuths.
"Their strategy is to put the blame on Jayalalithaa for the shell companies operated by them for laundering money and storing the ill-gotten wealth. Those who are familiar with Jayalalithaa know well that she was poor in such tricks and it was the handiwork of the greedy Mannargudi family members," said a commentator who did not want his name to be made public.
One of the close confidantes of Jayalalithaa had told The Pioneer that he was eased out from the Poes Garden residence by Sasikala and her relatives. "They ensured that Jayalalithaa's friends and relations are kept away from her so that they would have an upper hand on governance as well as party affairs," the former close confidante said.
The commentator also pointed out that political columnists and scribes owing allegiance to DMK and left parties were spreading news portraying Sasikala as the one who sacrificed her life for Jayalalithaa and the latter as an embodiment of all that was evil.
Divakaran was arrested by the police in 2012 on a complaint filed by a woman by name Kasthuri of Tiruvarur district. She had alleged that Divakaran demolished two houses, one belonging to her and another owned by her father-in-law in November 2011 due to political enmity. Divakaran was arrested and was in Tiruchy Central Prison for a fortnight.