National News
Day before RK Nagar bypoll, AIADMK’s Dhinakaran camp releases footage of Jayalalithaa in Apollo Hospital
A day before by-elections are to be held in RK Nagar, the one-time constituency of late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa, a video has been released purportedly showing the former AIADMK chief spending her last days in Chennai’s Apollo Hospital.
The video has been released by the TTV Dhinakaran-VK Sasikala camp of the AIADMK party, and comes at the end of what has been a very bitter electoral campaign battle for the prestigious Assembly constituency in north Chennai.
Jayalalithaa died on 5 December, 2016, following a 75-day hospitalisation. However, details surrounding her illness and demise remain shrouded in mystery, and Opposition parties have blamed the AIADMK and Jayalalithaa’s aide VK Sasikala of not releasing details.
DMK working president MK Stalin said on Tuesday that he would “unravel the mystery” behind Jayalalithaa’s death and bring the guilty to task, since it was not currently happening under the AIADMK government.
The Dhinakaran-Sasikala camp has said the video would settle this debate, and conclusively prove that Jayalalithaa was cared for when she was in the hospital. Speaking to the media, AIADMK leader P Vetrivel said the visuals show the former chief minister watching TV and drinking juice in the hospital. “These prove that she was in good hands at the hospital. The accusations that she was already ailing when they brought her to the hospital are incorrect,” he said.
Vetrivel, a Dhinakaran supporter and former AIADMK legislator, said they were “forced” to release this video because Opposition parties kept demanding proof. “OPS has been making accusations every day. Even yesterday, he was speaking about Amma’s death. We hope these pictures will settle the debate. We didn’t want to release this footage, but were forced to, because they keep going on,” he said.
Responding to criticism that the timing of the video’s release, just one day before the by-election, was “suspicious”, Vetrivel said they aren’t doing it for electoral gains. “The elections are a very small matter. Raising doubts over Amma’s death is a much bigger issue. We are sharing this video to settle that argument alone. We want to make it clear that she was cared for. If it was only about the elections, we could have shared it in April (when polling was originally scheduled to be held, before the Election Commission deferred it),” he added.
