Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar has found himself in the middle of a controversy, after two audio clips, purportedly with the voice of the minister, and an image of a birth certificate went viral. In the first audio clip a man, claimed to be Jayakumar, is heard talking to a frightened woman. She claims to be the mother of a girl who was impregnated by the minister. In that clip, the man is heard telling the woman to take the younger woman to a hospital and abort the foetus, and asking her to come and meet him at his house for monetary help to go to the hospital.
In the second audio clip, which is longer than the first one, the man is heard talking to the same woman, who is heard saying that the foetus couldn’t be aborted. In this clip, the man is heard asking her to come and meet him at the main road alone, so that he can discuss the situation in detail. Along with the audio clips, the image of an alleged birth certificate is also being circulated, naming “D Jayakumar” as the father of a child born in August this year.
As the clips went viral on Monday, the minister has denied his involvement in the issue. Speaking to the reporters on Monday evening, Jayakumar denied such an incident to have ever happened, and added that the voice in the clips was not his.
Jayakumar accused the Sasikala family and TTV Dhinakaran’s aides of fabricating the audio. “People who don’t have the strength to fight me are the ones who prepared this audio,” he declared. Adding that it was a planned attack on him to bring disrepute to his name due to political enmity, he said that he will file a case and that ‘miscreants’ would have to answer him legally.
When asked about his name on the image of the alleged birth certificate which went viral, he said that anybody’s name can be put in there and asked if he is the only D Jayakumar in the world.
Sources in the TTV Dhinakaran camp however say that they have spoken to the women in the audio clips, and believe that the minister is involved in the issue. "We have spoken the woman and her mother. They went to Jayakumar for some recommendation,” the source said. “A simple DNA test will reveal the truth,” he added.
Senior AIADMK Leader Thambidurai has come out in support of Jayakumar and questioned the authenticity of the audio clips. “It's usual for such news to come on TV. This is wrong information. This news is spread by people to divert attention. Jayakumar is not that kind of a person. Amma chose him,” Thambidurai said.