A year after the death of Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, her nephew J Deepak on Monday said the Z plus security personnel were not present at Apollo Hospital when she was admitted there.
In an interview to Tamil television channel Thanthi TV's Hariharan, Deepak, the son of Jayalalithaa's brother, said that she was provided Z plus security and while he had visited Apollo Hospital for 60 days during her 75 day stay, he never saw the central security and wondered why it was removed. He stated that there is CCTV footage in the hospital will prove that the security was removed.
"No minister visited Jayalalithaa when she was in hospital," Deepak said.
Jayalalithaa's close aide of several decades, the jailed VK Sasikala, had looked after the former very well, Deepak said. He also stated that Dr. Sivakumar, a member of the Sasikala family, took care of Jayalalithaa as a doctor and that Dhivaharan's daughter Ammu was also allowed to visit Jayalalithaa and take care of her. "Mu aunty was very fond of Dr. Sivakumar, she really liked him."
He said that during her hospital stay starting September 22, 2016, Jayalalithaa was conscious on the third day, when he visited her. He did not see her later, and was not briefed by the doctors either, he claimed. "The first day I visited her, she was not conscious. But on the third day, I saw her eating grapes. She was conscious," he said.
Deepak said that his aunt was not conscious when Governor C Vidyasagar Rao and Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi visited her, though it was officially said Jayalalithaa showed thumbs-up sign to Governor Rao.
"I haven't signed any papers in Apollo Hospital. Sasikala has signed the papers in the hospital," Deepak said.
According to him, as a relative of Jayalalithaa, he had given the oral sanction to stop the life support systems like ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine.
He also said delinking Sasikala and Dhinakaran from AIADMK is good for the party.
He also said that it was TTV Dhinakaran who dragged EPS by his shirt and said he would become the CM. "Sengottaiyan was to become the CM that day, he should have been appointed. But just in a second TTV Dhinakaran changed the decision," Deepak says. Interestingly, he also said that initally OPS expressed to Dhivaharan that Sasikala herself become the CM instead of him and that he does not want any post.
Watch full interview here