Sasikala family spars over footage, cracks wide open

CHENNAI: The release of a 20-second footage of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa in hospital exposed the fissures in the family of jailed leader V K Sasikala. The video was released by T T V Dhinakaran’s trusted lieutenant and disqualified MLA P Vetrivel a day before the RK Nagar byelection. Leading the pack were Krishnapriya, daughter of Ilavarasi Jayaraman, a co-convict in the disproportionate assets case, and Jeyanandh, son of V Divakaran, Sasikala’s brother.
“Sasikala shared the trials and tribulations of the former CM for three decades but she did not release the video even when she was charged with murder. Her silence and dignity has been destroyed by the video,” Krishnapriya said. Dhinakaran, an independent candidate for the bypoll, was not reachable the whole day.
Krishnapriya took to Twitter to express her anger hours after the video went viral. Her post, “It is a shameless act of Vetrivel associated with TTV(?)”, went viral on social media. The elder daughter of Ilavarasi, who strongly criticised Vetrivel, runs an NGO that had organised anti-NEET protest in Chennai. “Who is he to release the video when our Chinnamma opted not to do so? It is a betrayal of trust by Vetrivel. TTV should have acted against him by now. Don’t know why he still keeps him by his side,” she said, adding that the footage not only maligned the former chief minister but Sasikala too. Krishnapriya said the jailed leader gave utmost importance to Jayalalithaa’s dignity and preferred to maintain silence.
Her family handed over the video shot by Sasikala to Dhinakaran only to present it before the commission of inquiry and that too at the behest of Sasikala, Krishnapriya said. “But why has the video given to Dhinakaran reached Vetrivel? I will have to get the answers. The video has been released without the knowledge of Sasikala. It was not meant for public display,” she said.
After Jayaraman died due to electrocution in Jayalalithaa’s Hyderabad farmhouse, his wife Ilavarasi and her three children, Krishnapriya, Shakeela and Vivek, moved into the Poes Garden bungalow. Incidentally, Krishnapriya and Vivek toed a different line on the recent I-T searches, saying they were bounden to supply information to the department even while Dhinakaran dubbed it political vendetta. Sasikala stayed in Krishnapriya’s T Nagar residence during her parole recently.
A few hours after Krishnapriya’s outburst, Jeyanandh was all in praise of Vetrivel for “helping hundreds of cadres sleep peacefully”. Vetrivel did not do it for his gains, but for the sake of 1.5 crore cadres, he said. “A few members in my family would have felt sorry but it was important for the sake of cadres,” he told reporters. Jeyanandh said the high-decibel electoral campaign by the EPS-OPS combine against the family in RK Nagar bypoll had ‘pushed’ Vetrivel to release the video. The pamphlets, bearing no name and address, accusing the family of causing death to the former chief minister had been circulated widely and that was the reason for Vetrivel’s anger. “Let the authenticity of the footage be verified by international agencies and not by the state and central departments,” Jeyanandh said.