A sensational break-in at a 900-acre estate at Kodanadu in Tamil Nadu’s Nilgiris district on April 23, 2017, is now at the centre of a huge controversy involving, among others, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami.
The Kodanadu Estate served as the summer retreat cum camp office of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) supremo Jayalalithaa, when she was Chief Minister or otherwise. Her close aide, V.K. Sasikala, now serving a four-year jail term in a Karnataka prison following her conviction in a disproportionate assets case, used to stay with her in this retreat.
The estate was one of the main properties listed in the disproportionate assets case against Jayalalithaa and Sasikala. However, a former MLA close to the Sasikala group claimed that the ownership of the estate and the majestic “White Mansion” bungalow located on the premises had been transferred to a private entity. He refused to divulge details. Sasikala had lived in the official residence of Jayalalithaa at Poes Garden in Chennai even after Jayalalithaa’s death and until her arrest on February 15, 2017. “In this period she did not visit the estate, neither did her family members,” said the former MLA and Minister.
In political perspective
The break-in incident, which had almost been forgotten, sprang to life after Mathew Samuel, a Delhi-based freelance journalist and former reporter with Tehelka magazine, released a video in Delhi on January 11 this year in which two persons who were allegedly involved in the incident, Sayan and “Walayar” Manoj, made startling claims. After the video release, they met the media and claimed that they carried out the break-in to “lift certain documents” from the estate and that it was done on instructions from Chief Minister Palaniswami.
The significance of the controversy raging around the Kodanadu burglary will become clear only when one considers the veil of secrecy that surrounded Jayalalithaa and Sasikala and the series of political developments after the death of Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016. Her death created a huge vacuum in the AIADMK, the party that she managed with an iron fist, and left the rank and file confused.
The attempts of Sasikala and her family members, including her influential nephew, T.T.V. Dinakaran, to usurp the party and power gave rise to a politics of deception and opportunism. Sasikala was made interim general secretary and was about to become Chief Minister when the senior party functionary O. Panneerselvam, the then caretaker Chief Minister, raised the banner of revolt. This came as a surprise in a party that had rarely seen dissent when Jayalalithaa was the leader.
Panneerselvam, at the behest of S. Gurumurthy, who is a Tamil Nadu-based Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) ideologue, launched a “dharma yudh” to “save the party and the State from evil forces”. Sasikala had by then removed him as party treasurer and as Chief Minister-designate, claiming that the party remained united under her leadership. Then came the Supreme Court ruling upholding the trial court verdict in the disproportionate assets case convicting Sasikala, the second accused (the case against Jayalalithaa, the first accused, stood abated following her death), thus putting paid to her ambition to become Chief Minister.
Calling Panneerselvam a traitor, Sasikala nominated her “loyalist” Edappadi K. Palaniswami as Chief Minister before leaving for the Bengaluru prison. With Sasikala in prison, Palaniswami started consolidating his position, both in the party and in the government, after surviving a vote of confidence in the State Assembly and taking initiatives to neutralise dissent within the party. Panneerselvam, meanwhile, announced that his objective had been realised and chose to end his “dharma yudh”. He made up with Palaniswami but had to be content with playing second fiddle as Deputy Chief Minister. Palaniswami and Panneerselvam began alienating Sasikala and her family, including Dinakaran, from the party. Meanwhile, Dinakaran won the by-election in the R.K. Nagar constituency in Chennai as an independent candidate and floated his own party, the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK). Exploiting the confusion within the AIADMK, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which badly needed an ally in Tamil Nadu, assumed the role of “big brother” to the AIADMK leadership, which many in the party, including Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker M. Thambidurai, deeply resented.
It was against this backdrop of swift political developments that the break-in at the Kodanadu Estate happened. The incident would perhaps have been seen just as a burglary but for the death of 51-year-old Om Bahadur Thapa, a Nepali guard at Gate No. 10, through which the burglars had gained entry into the estate. He was found dead with his hands tied and mouth gagged the next day. Another guard, Krishna Bahadur Thapa (27), was found grievously injured.
The Nilgiris District police, which investigated the case, claimed that a group of 11 persons, 10 of them from Kerala, had gained entry into the personal room of Jayalalithaa after breaking the glass window panes. The police investigation, led by the then Superintendent of Police (S.P.), Murali Ramba, now S.P. in Thoothukudi, maintained that only a few low-priced watches with Jayalalithaa’s portrait embossed on them and a crystal showpiece had been stolen from the bungalow. Making an official statement in the State Assembly on July 6, 2017, the Chief Minister said that only a few watches and showpieces had been stolen. “Nothing else was stolen,” he categorically told the House.
The ‘mastermind’
The entire incident assumed significance when the investigation led the police to C. Kanakaraj of K.K. Samudhiram village in Edappadi block in Salem district. On April 25, 2017, the police arrested five members of the gang involved in the break-in and claimed that the gang did not intend to kill the watchman. The police said the arrested men told them during questioning that he had died of suffocation caused by gagging. They also said, according to the police, that Kanakaraj masterminded the break-in. On July 18, 2017, the five men were charged under the Goondas Act.
Even as the police were looking for Kanakaraj, news came of his death in a road accident near Attur town in Salem district at about 11.30 p.m. on April 27, 2017, four days after the break-in. The two-wheeler he was driving at the time of the accident did not have a registration number plate. The police claimed that he was drunk and was riding his bike on the wrong side on the two-lane National Highway near Attur bypass.
A perusal of Kanakaraj’s life revealed interesting details that resulted in the burglary case turning murkier. Kanakaraj was one of the trusted drivers of Jayalalithaa between 2008 and 2013. She dismissed him when she found out that he had been misusing her name. Later, he was seen in Sasikala’s entourage. That he happened to be a distant relative of Palaniswami seemingly added a new twist to the burglary case. “Kanakaraj was related to Saravanan, who, in 2010-2011, replaced Palaniswami as the party’s Salem West District Secretary. The political rivalry between Palaniswami and Saravanan, both relatives and from the Vellalar Gounder community, was a hot political topic then,” said an informed source in the party. Saravanan, Kanakaraj and Palaniswami belonged to neighbouring villages in Edappadi block in Salem district.
But Palaniswami regained his position after 18 months when Jayalalithaa removed Saravanan following complaints. A few months later, in 2011, Saravanan was killed in a road accident near Sankagiri in Salem district. For both these senior functionaries, the party source claimed, Kanakaraj’s proximity to the party’s power centre helped enormously.
Kanakaraj’s brother Dhanabal, talking to Frontline over phone from K.K. Samudhiram village, insisted that an independent inquiry should be conducted into the circumstances that led to the chain of road accidents, murder and suicide after the estate break-in. He said: “It is two years since my brother died. The Police’s actions have been dubious from the beginning in this case. They did not interrogate or arrest him for the heist when he was roaming about freely in his village.” He claimed that Kanakaraj was living in their midst without any fear after committing such a high-profile burglary. “So someone powerful should have assured him of safety,” he said.
Dhanabal claimed that it was his brother who helped Palaniswami regain his district-level party post after Saravanan, who “happened to be our distant relative”, was removed. Palaniswami and Saravanan, and other functionaries in the district, had used Kanakaraj to help steady their fluctuating political fortunes in 2011, he claimed. “Saravanan was Palaniswami’s trusted cadre. But when he was made the district secretary, he could not bear it.” Dhanabal, a long-time AIADMK card holder, said that his life and that of his family members were in danger. “It is better to have an independent inquiry into the whole episode,” he said.
The Salem-based senior AIADMK leader and former Minister S. Semmalai told Frontline that the linking of the name of the Chief Minister to the Kodanadu heist was politically motivated. “I know both Kanakaraj and Saravanan and Dhanabal too. It was Saravanan who took Kanakaraj to our Amma and got him the job of a driver. But since he fell out of favour with Amma, both of them were shown the door. Since then, both had started indulging in cheap politics against Palaniswami,” he said.
He also said that they were not related to Palaniswami, as claimed, though they belonged to the same caste and neighbouring villages. “There is not even an iota of truth to the [Sayan and “Walayar” Manoj’s] claims. How could you accept a statement from two criminals? After two years of hiatus they are surfacing today to level wild allegations. They should have deposed before the court. The journalist Mathew Samuel has some ulterior motive. We know how to tackle them and their baseless allegations,” he said.
Mysterious deaths
Just a few hours after the accident in which Kanakaraj died, that is, in the early hours of April 28, 2017, the second accused in the estate heist, K.V. Sayan alias Shyam (37), who was driving to Thrissur from Palakkad in Kerala in his car with his wife Vinupriya and five-year-old daughter Neethu, also met with an accident in which he sustained serious injuries, while his wife and daughter died. The Tamil Nadu police told the media that Sayan had rammed his car into a truck from behind. Sayan, who worked in a bakery in Thrissur, happened to be an assistant of Sajeevan, a popular carpenter at the estate. Sajeevan did all the carpentry work in the estate. Kanakaraj and Sayan had become close friends because of their frequent visits to the estate.
Three months later, yet another death, this time a suicide, took place. On July 3, 2017, a computer operator at the estate, Bojan Dineshkumar (24), who reportedly maintained the electronic systems, including the CCTVs that were installed in the estate, allegedly committed suicide in his house at Gengarai village near Kotagiri. The police ruled out foul play and said that he had had an eye surgery that had gone wrong. Dineshkumar had been working in the estate for seven years.
Earlier, on May 8, 2017, the police had questioned a former maid at the estate. The woman could not give any worthwhile information. She appeared to be “mentally disturbed”, the police later claimed. These small details linked to the estate break-in were reported in the local media then.
Kodanadu security
Kodanadu Estate was a high security zone, with an army of armed private guards manning its 10 gates. At least 30 CCTV cameras had been installed to keep a watch on the premises that is also covered by foot patrols round the clock. This level of security would, it is argued, make it impossible for anyone to break into the estate without assistance from inside. On the night of the break-in, the routine police bandobust at Gate No. 10 was inadequate. The estate, which had 24-hour uninterrupted power supply, reportedly remained without power on the night of the break-in. The images captured by the CCTV cameras at Gate No. 10 were allegedly blurred, while CCTVs at other places were found switched off. A report in Deccan Chronicle claimed that the cameras were found to have been removed. The police also did not say that they were in the possession of TV grabs to substantiate their claims on the heist.
Were these lapses in security just a matter of coincidence? The charge sheet and the trial in court should provide the answer. The police at Solurmattam in Nilgiris district have registered a case under Sections 324, 342, 449, 396, 120 (b), 147, 148, 397, 149, 447, 458, 395 and 302 of the Indian Penal Code, under Crime 158/17, against the 11 accused, of whom the first accused, Kanakaraj, is dead.
On September 16, 2018, 145 days after the registration of the case, the Nilgiris police filed a charge sheet running to nearly 300 pages at the judicial magistrate court in Kotagiri, which included forensic reports and inquiry details of 97 witnesses, besides 69 documents. The trial in the case, committed to the Sessions Court, will start in the first week of February.
The investigation
The local media claimed that on April 29, 2017, the police had told them that they had found three suitcases lying in the open in the estate. They also reported the suspected involvement of a Kerala-based hawala operator and an ex-employee of the estate in the heist.
The entire investigation was cloaked in secrecy from the beginning until Mathew Samuel released the 18-minute video in Delhi on January 11. The AIADMK dismissed the claims in the video as “lies” and called Sayan and “Walayar” Manoj “hirelings”.
In the video, Sayan could be seen claiming that Kanakaraj had confided to him that Palaniswami had asked him to hire people from outside Tamil Nadu in order to take away “some important documents” from Jayalalithaa’s room and hand them over to him. “The documents were handed over to him [the Chief Minister] at a place in Salem,” claimed Sayan in an interview given to Sun TV.
An AIADMK functionary, V.V.R. Raja Sathyan, filed a criminal case on January 11 against Mathew Samuel, Sayan and “Walayar” Manoj with the Greater Chennai Police. Sections 153 (A), 505 (1), (b), (c) and 505 (2) of the Indian Penal Code were invoked against them for “circulating false and provocative contents with malicious intention” targeting the Chief Minister. It further claimed that the material in the video would provoke the public and presented the “likelihood of [people] indulging in rioting”.
Two arrests
A special team led by a Deputy Commissioner of Police rushed to Delhi and apprehended Sayan and “Walayar” Manoj in Delhi. “Both, inexplicably, seem to have made almost no effort to either resist or run away. They looked very composed,” said a senior police officer. The two were produced before the Chennai Magistrate A. Saritha, who refused to remand them mechanically to judicial custody, as insisted by the police, for “want of adequate material”. The judicial officer asked the police to show how the video would provoke the public to indulge in rioting. Later, they were enlarged on bail.
The State police seemed to be in a hurry to defend and clear the name of the Chief Minister. A senior police officer said: “The police should have steered clear of such things. Their job was confined to completing the investigation and filing a charge sheet. Defending the Chief Minister should be left to his party politicians and himself. Officials should not react to accusations that were made after two years of the incident by some dubious characters.”
These assessments of the police are based on reactions relating to the case by two police officers. The Hindu carried an interview with Murali Ramba, who happened to be the S.P. at Nilgiris when the heist took place. He reiterated his earlier claim that the heist was just a break-in to loot valuables. The Deputy Inspector General of Police of Salem, T. Senthilkumar, hurriedly convened a press conference on Pongal Day, a State government holiday, to reiterate that Kanakaraj had died in a road accident two years back.
He said the post-mortem report had shown traces of alcohol in his intestines, liver and kidneys. He further said that under the influence of alcohol Kanakaraj hopped on to the wrong side of the National Highway, resulting in a head-on collision with a Karnataka-registered car.
When contacted, the Attur Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Pon Karthikeyan, who is handling the accident case, refused to talk about the case. He refused to part with a copy of the post-mortem report on the grounds that it was a medico-legal case, which was still pending before the court. Frontline sourced the report elsewhere. He even asked this correspondent to prevail upon the National Highways Authority of India to widen the stretch near Attur so that accidents could be minimised. “The accident site where Kanakaraj was killed is a two-way stretch of 7.3 kilometres. Nearly 30 fatal accidents take place every year on this stretch,” he said. Cases under Sections 279 and 304 (A) were registered against the car driver, who, Dhanabal claimed, was from Thammampatti in Salem district.
Post-mortem report
The post-mortem on Kanakaraj’s body was done at the Attur Government Hospital at 4.45 a.m. on April 29, 2017. One of the four identity marks found on his body was a tattoo mark of the two leaves symbol of the AIADMK party, which he sported on his left arm. The report, signed by one Dr M. Anitha, claimed that his body bore multiple injuries on the legs, hands and other parts. Congestion in lungs and blood clots in all the four chambers of the heart could be seen, while the skull suffered a contusion of 5x5 on the right side. The kidneys, the pelvis and the spleen were found to be normal while the urinary bladder was found to be empty. However, the report said that the final cause for the death had to be ascertained pending chemical analysis, the results of which the Salem police refused to part with.
That there are visible signs of panic among the ruling party politicians and others over the case is evident. Denials and diversions have started cropping up. Angry rebuttals from a few Ministers also underscore their uneasiness. The Chief Minister has denied all the charges and called them frivolous, aimed at maligning his reputation.
Gag order
The Madras High Court passed an order restraining Mathew Samuel and six others, including Sayan and “Walayar” Manoj, from talking to the media on the issue. Justice K. Kalyanasundaram issued the order on January 23, hours after Mathew Samuel had addressed the media in Chennai, on an interim application moved by the Chief Minister. The order restrained them from circulating any videos and other material on social media leveling “baseless” allegation against Palaniswami. Also, the Chief Minister, in his personal capacity, moved the court for an urgent defamation suit against Mathew Samuel and six others for Rs.1.1 crore.
At a meeting in Kovilpatti on January 20 he blamed the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) for these “cheap”’ dramas of deceit to capture power. He said that DMK lawyers represented the three who accused him, which is true. The DMK, however, defended itself saying that as a responsible opposition party it had a moral responsibility to save the three from the present government and help them expose the Chief Minister’s involvement, if any, in the heist. Leaders of almost all political parties demanded that a special investigation team be set up under a serving High Court judge and that the Chief Minister resign immediately and face the inquiry.
Some political observers believed that linking the Chief Minister’s name with the heist was part of the “pressure politics” under which the AIADMK has been reeling since the death of Jayalalithaa. The BJP, they claim, is an orphaned entity in Tamil Nadu. Said a veteran party leader: “With the Lok Sabha election round the corner, they cannot face the electorate without an alliance in the State. Their natural ally is the AIADMK, though voices of protest against such an alliance are surfacing openly from within the party.”
