CHENNAI: A recording of late chief minister
Jayalalithaa's voice, telling a doctor that her blood pressure of 140/80 was normal for her, has been made available to the media by the commission probing her death.
When a duty doctor tells Jayalalithaa her blood pressure was "high, it reads 140 (systolic)," she asks "by", meaning what was the diastolic value.
To this, the doctor replies "140/80," and she replies "its okay for me... normal."
At the beginning of the 1.07 minute audio, which has beep sounds of the monitors, she coughs and says she can hear a sound, (to denote her breathing difficulty) and it was similar to whistles made by fans in cinema houses.
She also tells a man, identified as Dr K S
Sivakumar, her physician, that if it was not possible (to download a mobile application to record her wheezing) "leave it."
In another 33-second audio, which is connected to the other recording, Dr Sivakumar tells Jayalalithaa, who is breathing heavily, that he is recording the wheezing and it was not "very intense now."
Coughing, she tells him "when it (wheezing) was there, I told you, you said it (application) could not be taken (downloaded)."
The doctor says in between that he has downloaded the application (app/to record her wheezing).
Her last voice recordings were made available by the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission of Inquiry today, probing the circumstances leading to the hospitalisation and the subsequent death of the late leader in 2016.
The
Justice Arumughaswamy commission has also released a diet and medical chart of the former Tamil Nadu CM as submitted to it by her personal physician Dr KS Sivakumar.
The chart has details of her diet, blood pressure and sugar levels as noted down on August 2, 2016, prior to her hospitalization.
Giving a background to the recordings, counsel for Jayalalithaa's aide V K Sasikala, N Raja Senthoor Pandian,said that on January 8 2018,Dr Sivakumar had told the Commission in his deposition that he had recorded Jayalalithaa's voice on the night of September 27 2016 at Apollo Hospital.
The voice recording was done by Sivakumar, when the late leader had "wheezing (breathing difficulty) problem."
This was done, according to Sivakumar's deposition, to send the late Chief Minister's voice to a specialist doctor for further evaluation.
"Today, when Dr Sivakumar (questioned by the panel as its witness) appeared before the Commission for deposition, he submitted madam's voice recording during cross examination by me and it was marked as an exhibit," Pandian told PTI.
After her admission to Apollo Hospital on September 22 2016, she had a wheezing problem on September 27, he said, quoting Sivakumar's deposition.
According to Sivakumar's deposition today, after a tracheostomy procedure in October 2016, Jayalalithaa also identified pictures of some deities and spoke a few words with difficulty.
Sivakumar also submitted a to-do list dated August 2, 2016 that covers diet-cum-health monitoring tasks like measuring fasting blood sugar (marked as FBS in the note) and tablets for diabetes, including 'Januvia-50 mg.'
Handwritten by Jayalalithaa in green ink, the chart showed she was conscious of her health and food, according to the deposition.
The chart, that also records her weight (106.9 kg) begins with "lotus water" at 4.55am and breakfast of one idli, four slices of bread, tender coconut water of 230 ml and 400 ml of coffee between 5.05am and 5.35am.
For lunch (2pm to 2.35pm), she had written basmati rice 1 1/2 cups, one cup yoghurt and musk melon 1/2 bowl.
Her dinner (6.30pm to 7.15pm) comprised walnut and dry fruits (1/2 cup), idli or upma one cup, one dosai, two slices of bread, milk 200 ml and anti diabetic tablets.
Coffee (200 ml) in the evening (5.45pm) and green tea (200 ml) in the mornings were part of her schedule (5.45am).
Hitting out at the timing of the release of such information, Leader of the opposition in the assembly and DMK Working President MK Stalin alleged that the commission is being used to divert people's attention from the Tuticorin police firing as people were angry at the government over it.
The Justice Arumughaswamy commission was formed by the state government last year to probe the circumstances surrounding former chief minister J Jayalalithaa's death.
Many people close to Jayalalithaa and those who worked for her, including her nephew and niece, officials like advisor Sheela Balakrishnan and K Ramanujan and bureaucrats like Rama Mohan Rao have deposed before the commission.
(With inputs from PTI)
