Former Tamil Nadu CM Walks Free In Illegal Assets Case

By M. Santhiran NEW DELHI (India), May 11 (Bernama) -- Rapturous celebrations erupted at the AIADMK party headquarters in Chennai and throughout Tamil Nadu immediately after the Karnataka High Court set aside an order convicting former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case. Justice C. R. Kumaraswamy, sitting on the court's special bench and reading out the judgement about 11am (local time), ruled that the appeal by Jayalalithaa and three others was allowed. Kumaraswamy's judgement lasted less than 30 seconds, according to local media. He did not read out his judgement in the open court. Jayalalithaa was not in the high court during the pronouncement of the appeal. The judge ruled that the main prosecution arguments that three of Jayalalithaa's associates — V. Sasikala, V. N. Sudhakaran and Ilavarasi - had conspired with her when she was chief minister between 1991 to 1996 in acquiring assets illegally, simply did not hold water. In September 2014, the former leading film star of Tamil movies was sentenced to four years jail and fined 100 crore rupees (about RM60 million). Monday's decision will pave the way for Jayalalithaa to active politics and she will likely take over from the caretaker chief minister, O. Panneerselvam. Local media in Chennai have also been speculating on the possiblity of AIADMK to call for a snap poll. In the 2011 state elections, Jayalalithaa led her party winning a third term as chief minister, and in the national elections last May, her party won 37 of Tamil Nadu's 39 parliamentary seats. In a related development, thousands of policemen were deployed at a 1km radius along the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border to stop possible clashes among Jayalalithaa's people and those of Karnataka travelling to the neighbouring state. Local media in Chennai reported that AIADMK supporters who gathered at the Poes Garden - the official residence of Jayalalithaa - erupted in wild celebration and reached fever pitch, upon hearing news of their leader's acquittal. The 18-year-old assets case against Jayalalithaa was initiated by the DMK-led government in 1996, a main rival political party of AIADMK, following a complaint by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy. According to The Hindu, a major daily here, the court case reached its climax on Sept 27, last year, when a Special Court convicted Jayalalithaa and associates Sasikala, Sudhakaran and Ilavarasi for amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income. The verdict put Jayalalithaa in jail for a brief period before she eventually obtained bail from the Supreme Court in October. The apex court had set a three-month deadline by May 12 for the High Court to complete the appeal. --BERNAMA