Income Tax Dept raids Jayalalitha’s Poes Garden residence, Sasikala’s room searched
Chennai, November 18: After raiding over AIADMK leader Sasikala’s properties, Income Tax department raided former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha’s Poes Garden residence. Sasikala, a close aide of Jayalalitha was living in her house after the death of Jayalalitha and continued to stay there until she was sent to jail by the Supreme Court.
The operation launched was only confined to Jayalalitha’s aide Poongundran’s room. “We have not searched the entire Poes Garden premises. Our team went at 9 pm and only Poongundran’s room, records room and other room used by Sasikala were searched,” said the top Income Tax official.
Earlier, the Income Tax Department claimed to have unearthed cash, valuables and documents related to undisclosed income calculated at approximately Rs 1,430 crore after concluding a five-day-long search and seizure operation, including raids on premises of sidelined AIADMK general secretary VK Sasikala’s relatives and former aides of late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
On November 9, Income Tax sleuths raided 187 premises across multiple cities, mostly in Tamil Nadu. The I-T department conducted raids on the Sasikala clan and premises of Jaya TV, who’s CEO and Managing Director Vivek Jayaraman is the nephew of the AIADMK leader last week. The places raided included the residence of Sasikala's husband M. Natarajan in Thanjavur, Kodanad Tea Estate belonging to Jayalalithaa, Jazz Cinemas, Midas Distilleries, Sharada Paper and Boards, Senthil Group of Companies, Nilgiri Furniture in Coimbatore, Jaya TV, Namadhu MGR and several other premises in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru.
Sasikala is currently serving a jail sentence after conviction for corruption. The searches were conducted in connection with the unexplained routing of cash post-demonetisation through shell companies allegedly connected to Sasikala and her nephew T.T.V. Dinakaran, who heads one of the factions of the ruling AIADMK.