The Supreme Court may have crushed the chief ministerial ambitions of AIADMK chief V K Sasikala, who is serving a four-year jail term in Parappana Agahara prison in connection with a Disproportionate Assets (DA) case, but her influence over the state authorities is quite evident from this recent revelation.
Lodged inside the Bengaluru prison, Sasikala has met 28 visitors on 14 occasions in 31 days in the central prison, in defiance of all rules prescribed under law.
The Karnataka Prison Manual (KPM) and the Karnataka Prison Rules (KPR) clearly specify that a convict is eligible to meet his/her friends, relatives and advocates only once in 15 days, and that too under the surveillance of a prison official.
However, all these “rules” have been blatantly violated in case of Convict No 9234, V K Sasikala.
According to a Times of India report, between February 16 and March 18, Sasikala had 28 visitors and each person spent over 40 minutes with her, some on multiple occasions.
It further cited prison sources saying that it’s a violation of prison rules, which was sanctioned by higher authorities. They also said that visitors were allowed to talk to her in a special area, often in private.
Her visitors included AIADMK’s deputy general secretary and Chennai’s R K Nagar bypoll candidate TTV Dinakaran, deputy speaker of Lok Sabha M Thambidurai and several others of the party’s who’s who.
Dinakaran met his aunt Sasikala on two occasions – February 20 and March 8 – and each interaction lasted over 45 minutes.
As per prison rules, relatives of a convict are granted not more than 10 minutes at a crowded point and behind bars. However, in Sasikala’s case, nephews Vivek Jayaraman and K. Karthikeyan, as well as her advocates met her with ease.
