VK Sasikala to be discharged from Bengaluru hospital today after completing COVID-19 treatment

Bengaluru: Expelled AIADMK leader VK Sasikala, undergoing treatment for COVID-19 in a hospital, would be discharged on Sunday, a bulletin said. “Sasikala Natarajan completed 10 days of treatment today. She has been asymptomatic and maintaining saturation without oxygen for the past three days. As per protocol, she can be discharged from the hospital,” Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute said in the bulletin. “The team of doctors attending to her has taken the decision that she is fit for discharge and she will be discharged tomorrow, but has been advised home quarantine,” it said. Sasikala was released on Wednesday after she completed four years of imprisonment in a jail here in a case of disproportionate assets. Being treated for COVID-19, the 66-year-old close aide of former Tamil Nadu chief minister late J Jayalalithaa had remained in the hospital. Sasikala’s return to Tamil Nadu is of political significance as it comes at a time when the southern state is going for Assembly polls in April-May. Her supporters expect their ‘Chinnamma’ as Sasikala is called by her supporters to gain control of the AIADMK, from which she was expelled as an interim general secretary. The ruling AIADMK, led by Chief Minister K Palaniswami and his deputy O Panneerselvam, had time and again asserted that there was no scope for Sasikala being inducted again in the party. After Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016, Sasikala was set to become the chief minister in early 2017 with the party naming her interim general secretary and following her election as AIADMK legislature party leader. However, with the Supreme Court restoring the trial court’s judgement convicting her in the assets case, she facilitated the election of Palaniswami as the AIADMK legislature party leader and made him the chief minister. Before going to prison in Bengaluru, she had visited the mausoleum of Jayalalithaa in Chennai and made a dramatic vow, though she did not openly declare what it was all about. Along with her sister-in-law J Ilavarasi and late Jayalalithaa’s disowned foster son V N Sudhakaran, she was convicted in the Rs 66-crore disproportionate assets case which bars her from contesting elections for six years from the date of her release. The 27 September, 2014 order of the Special Court awarding imprisonment and a fine of Rs 10 crore each was upheld by the Supreme Court on 14 February, 2017.