State govt. trashes woman’s claim of being Jayalalithaa’s daughter

The State Government on Wednesday told the Madras High Court that no materials were available in government records to support Bengaluru-based S. Amrutha’s claim that she was the biological daughter of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and they both had visited each other at Bengaluru and Chennai during the latter’s lifetime. Besides, the State said there was no need to order a DNA test.

The submission was made by Public Secretary P. Senthilkumar, who had filed a counter-affidavit on behalf of the Chief Secretary, in reply to a writ petition preferred by the 37-year-old woman seeking a direction to the government to exhume the body of Jayalalithaa from Marina beach here and cremate it in accordance with Iyengar customs.

At the outset, the counter-affidavit stated that the present writ petition was not maintainable at all since the Supreme Court had already rejected a similar claim. “It is further submitted that the petitioner is canvassing unproved factual details and wants a roving enquiry, which is unsustainable. These disputed facts cannot be gone into by this court under the writ jurisdiction,” it added. In so far as the petitioner’s claim that Jayalalithaa had visited her in Bengaluru in 2007 and 2008 and that would be evident from the protocol register, the Public Secretary said: “Due to efflux of time, the veracity of the same could not be verified, and as such, there is no proof to show that the former Chief Minister visited the petitioner.”

Telephone bills as proof

He added that the petitioner too had not submitted any proof to support her statement and if at all her claims were true, the petitioner would certainly be in possession of some evidence. Similarly, there was no proof to substantiate the petitioner’s claim of having stayed with Jayalalithaa at the latter’s Poes Garden residence.

Though the petitioner had submitted some telephone bills pertaining to the years 2002 and 2003 to claim that she had been in touch with Jayalalithaa, the government said: “As per the rules of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the telephone call records are maintained only for one year. Hence, the petitioner’s claim could not be verified.”

Further, referring to a sworn affidavit filed by the former Chief Minister at the time of contesting the elections from the R.K. Nagar constituency in May 2016 when she had declared that she had no spouse or dependants, Mr. Senthilkumar said the declaration would clearly show that the petitioner’s claim of being the biological daughter was “utterly false and deserves to be rejected.”

It was pointed out that the petitioner had given a representation to the government for exhuming the body of Jayalalithaa only on December 9, 2017, one year after she passed away. When the writ petition itself was not maintainable, there was no necessity to pass interim orders for conducting the DNA test, the government said.