Sasikala applies for parole to 'meet ailing husband'

Sidelined AIADMK leader V.K. Sasikala on Tuesday applied for a 15-day parole to the central jail authorities here to meet her ailing husband M. Natarajan in Chennai in Tamil Nadu, a prison official said.

"She (Sasikala) applied today (Tuesday) for 15-day parole to visit Chennai and meet her husband who is seriously ill," Parpanna Agrahara Central Jail Superintendent M. Somashekar told IANS here.

"The decision on parole and its duration will be decided in a couple of days in consultation with authorities concerned," he added.

A confidante of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, Sasikala, 60, is serving a four-year jail term in the prison on the city's outskirts since February 15 after the Supreme Court on February 14 upheld her conviction in a corruption case in September 2015 by a trial court here.

 

"Her application will be considered on getting the opinion of the state legal and police departments. We will stipulate the number of days Sasikala will be allowed to be on parole and when she should return," the officer said.

Co-convicts Elavarasi and V.N. Sudhakaran, Sasikala's sister in-law and nephew, are also serving their sentence but have not applied for parole.

M. Natarajan, 74, a former bureaucrat in the Tamil Nadu government during Jayalalithaa's earlier tenures, is awaiting a liver transplant in a private hospital in Chennai, about 350km from here.

He has also registered with the Tamil Nadu Organ Sharing waiting list for cadaver liver transplant.

According to AIADMK faction leader T.T.V. Dinakaran, Natarajan is in the Liver Intensive Care Unit of the Gleneagles Global Health City in Chennai.

Though Jayalalithaa was also convicted in the multi-crore disproportionate assets case as the main accused, she passed away on December 5, 2016, at a private hospital in Chennai.

She was also in the same jail here for three weeks from September 26 to October 20, 2015 but was released on conditional bail by the apex court.

--IANS

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