Chennai: The Arumugasamy Commission probing the death of J Jayalalithaa has issued summons to Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and has asked him to appear before it on December 20.
Panneerselvam was one of the first to raise suspicions over the death of then chief minister Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016 and had demanded a CBI inquiry. The AIADMK leader has also said that he was never allowed to meet Jayalalithaa during her 75-day hospitalisation.
The inquiry committee has issued summons to Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan to appear on December 14, Health Minister C Vijayabaskar on December 18 along with Jayalalithaa's personal security officer Perumalswamy.
The probe panel has also written to the Karnataka prison department seeking permission to examine VK Sasikala who was a close confidant of Jayalalithaa and is now jailed in a corruption case. In March this year, Sasikala had filed a 50-page affidavit describing the events that unfolded before Jayalalithaa was rushed to Apollo Hospitals and during her hospitalisation.
The committee has summoned the domestic workers of Jayalalithaa’s home in Poes Garden to depose on December 14. Interestingly, one of the discrepancies was whether or not the maids were present when Jayalalithaa lost consciousness at home. In her affidavit, Sasikala did not mention the maids’ presence at Veda Nilayam. But Jayalalithaa’s personal medical advisor KS Sivakumar, who is also a relative of Sasikala, recorded that there were two maids not known to him but identifiable.
The commission is in the final stages of its probe and is likely to submit the final report on February 24, Jayalalithaa's birth anniversary. The committee that was set up in September 2017 has examined more than 130 witnesses, including doctors from Apollo Hospitals, KS Sivakumar, former chief secretary Rama Mohana Rao and Jayalalithaa’s adviser Sheela Balakrishnan.
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