Sasikala's wealth decoded: A garden, some bungalows and a big fat wedding

<i>BS</i> looks at the link between V K Sasikala's rise and fall and the assets she acquired

The Supreme Court on Tuesday dashed V K Sasikala’s hopes of becoming chief minister of Tamil Nadu by setting aside a high court judgment that had in May 2015 acquitted her, her relatives V N Sudhakaran, J Elavarasi and the late J Jayalalithaa. 

The Bench of Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitava Roy said though references had been made to Jayalalithaa’s role and the nexus between her and the other accused, “she having expired meanwhile, the appeals, so far as those relate to her stand abated.” 

But, the court trashed the high court’s calculations that led to the acquittal. “We have considered the facts of this case and in our opinion, the percentage of disproportionate assets as 8.12 per cent as computed by the High Court is based on completely wrong reading of the evidence on record compounded by incorrect arithmetical calculations,” the court observed. 

It added the evidence on record proved the disproportionateness so unassailably that “it is inessential as well to resort to any arithmetic to compute the percentage thereof.” The court relied on submissions of Karnataka special prosecutor B V Acharya on the errors in calculations of the high court. 

Let us look at some key numbers, meticulously documented by investigators that portray the greed of a chief minister and her associates, which sent them after money, land, gold and other forms of ostentations. And, who can forget that big fat wedding of Sudhakaran, Sasikala’s nephew, briefly adopted as son by Jayalalithaa? The Supreme Court saw through all these. It said the co-living arrangement in Poes Garden was a conspiracy to hold ill-gotten assets; nothing social about it.  

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