VK Sasikala, aide of late Tamil Nadu CM J Jayalalithaa and former general secretary of the AIADMK, who is currently in Bengaluru central prison was questioned by Income Tax Department officials on Thursday. The questioning will continue on Friday in Parapanna Agrahara. The IT officials questioned Sasikala on documents recovered during raids carried out in November, 2017 at former CM Jayalalithaa’s residence at Poes Gardens in Chennai .
A senior jail official said, “The I-T officials from Chennai had arrived around 10 am. The questioning will continue tomorrow. We were informed that they will come through Home Department beforehand.”
Sasikala was sent to jail in February, 2017 after the Supreme Court restored a trial court verdict, which had also held Jayalalithaa guilty in the DA (disproportionate assets) case. She was out on emergency parole in March on account of her husband Natarajan’s death.
An I-T Department official had earlier told Times of India, “We want to question her in connection with the searches conducted in her room at the Poes Garden residence of Jayalalithaa as well as in other places. We have seized several documents, papers and pen drives from Sasikala’s room. It is part of the investigation. We have checked the pen drives, hard disks and papers seized. We need to question her to take the probe forward.”
The questioning comes in light of a special Enforcement Directorate court summoning the 59-year-old in connection with a different Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) violation case against her. Reportedly, central jail authorities failed to produce her to court due to her health condition. In May, 2017 Sasikala was made part of the proceedings through video conferencing from jail after filing an undertaking to the court.
Other than the I-T and ED, Sasikala will be further grilled by retired Justice Arumugasamy Commission who is probing the controversial circumstances leading to the death of Jayalalithaa. Reports suggest that Justice Arumugasamy has formally written to prison authorities. The Commission is set to submit its report in February, 2019.
In 1996, the ED probed charges against JJ TV, a predecessor of Jaya TV, where Sasikala was the director and chairperson. These charges were related to foreign exchange payments made to various companies for uplinking facilities and transponder hiring charges.
