Arrest TTV and Dhivakaran for comments on Jaya's death: Minister

Tamil Nadu fisheries minister and senior AIADMK leader D Jayakumar on Thursday said RK Nagar legislator TTV Dhinakaran and his uncle Dhivakaran should be arrested for speaking about the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa.

Speaking to reporters at the airport in Chennai, Jayakumar accused the Sasikala family of politicising Jayalalithaa’s death for their personal gains.

“The Justice A. Arumughaswamy Commission should order the arrest of Dhivakaran and TTV Dhinakaran and inquire them. Only then, the truth will come out. They are politicising the issue for their personal gains,” Jayakumar said.

In a fresh twist to the death of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, the brother of her close aide, now jailed, V K Sasikala on Wednesday said that she died on December 4, 2016 and not on December 5 as officially announced by Apollo Hospitals.

Participating at the AIADMK founder and former Chief Minister MG Ramachandran (MGR) birth centenary celebrations in Tiruvarur district, Dhivakaran said "Jayalalithaa died at 5.15 p.m. on Dec 4, 2016 and not the next day late night and the official declaration was delayed by a day so as to provide adequate security to the chain of Apollo Hospitals across the state."

His statement comes at a time when a Commission of Inquiry is probing into the circumstances that led to the hospitalisation of Jayalalithaa.

Later, he convened a press meet and said, “My statement was wrongly construed. Jayalalithaa suffered ‘clinical death’ on December 4, after which Apollo Hospitals specialists tried strenuously to revive her. But on December 5 she suffered ‘biological death.’ Doctors from the Rajiv Gandhi Memorial Government General Hospital certified her death after which the Apollo Hospital formally announced her demise."

Reacting to Divakaran's statement, Apollo Hospitals said, "It is unfortunate that unnecessary confusion is being created based on certain misinformation about the date and time of the demise of our former chief minister J Jayalalithaa, who expired on December 5, 2016."