Ramesh death is no suicide: Jayalalithaa

By Radha Venkatesan

CHENNAI, SEPT. 1. Amid pandemonium in the Assembly today, the Chief Minister, Ms. Jayalalithaa, declared that the death of Ramesh - a friend of the Chennai Mayor, Mr. M.K. Stalin - and his family was not suicide.

``The death of Ramesh was not a case of suicide. They (DMK) are aware of it. The police will come out with the facts soon'', Ms. Jayalalithaa said.

Responding vehemently to the DMK member, Mr. E. Pugazhendi's reference to the ``mass suicide due to police harassment'', the Chief Minister, during the noisy debate on the Police department, said the police had not registered any case against Ramesh. ``It is wrong to state that it was a suicide.''

While Mr. Stalin remained silent, Mr. Pugazhendi sought to persist with the issue, only to be shouted down by the AIADMK members.

Objecting to the din raised by the ruling party, the senior DMK member, Mr. Durai Murugan asked the Speaker, Mr. K. Kalimuthu, whether the AIADMK MLAs' behaviour was in keeping with the dignity of the House. ``Does the Speaker and the Chief Minister approve of this sort of behaviour?''

Immediately, the Chief Minister said she was time and again controlling her party members. But the DMK was deliberately provoking them. ``During the previous Assembly, when there were only four AIADMK members, the Treasury Benches shouted them down'', she charged.

Retorting, Mr. Durai Murugan said it was only because the Treasury Benches gave a patient hearing to the opposition charges that one of the then Ministers, Mr. Veerapandi Arumugham, was punched in the nose by an AIADMK member. However, Ms. Jayalalithaa said the member in question did not belong to the AIADMK.

Earlier, Mr. Pugazhendi kicked up a furore, when he charged that police functioning had deteriorated in the past three months.

Referring to the Chief Minister's recent statement that there was a paucity of good police officers in the State, the DMK member sought to know whether the remark would not demoralise the force. ``When the then Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, said in the Assembly, that most of the police force was rotten, did he not demoralise them,'' Ms. Jayalalithaa shot back angrily.

It was during the DMK regime that Coimbatore witnessed serial blasts killing over 60 persons, she pointed out. When the DMK member retorted that the blast in the RSS office in Chennai had taken place during her erstwhile regime, the Chief Minister said it was only a minor incident compared to the serial blasts.

While she had ordered a CBI inquiry into the RSS office explosion, the former DMK regime rejected the demand for a CBI inquiry into the Coimbatore blasts, she pointed out.

When the DMK member referred to the spate of fires in the Thanjavur belt after the AIADMK regime took over, Ms. Jayalalithaa said a team headed by the DIG, Intelligence, was set up to probe the causes.

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Section  : Southern States
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