As Kodanad estate heist probe crawls, Stalin’s promise remains a distant reality | Political Pulse News,The Indian Express

Last year, Tamil Nadu CM vowed to get to the bottom of the 2017 robbery at Jayalalithaa’s vacation home. SIT probing the incident has been questioning people but has not made much progress.

One of the promises that DMK chief MK Stalin made in the run-up to the Tamil Nadu Assembly polls last year was that he would get to the bottom of the Kodanad estate heist of 2017, and a murder and mysterious deaths allegedly linked to it. After becoming the chief minister, Stalin stuck to his guns despite protests by the AIADMK and told the Assembly that “the heist, murder, and a number of deaths that followed the incident raised several doubts in the mind of the public”. He said his promise to bring all the culprits to justice had “no political agenda”.

But, 14 months down the line a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the case has hardly made any progress and is effectively stuck.

The heist and murder received public attention as it happened at the former CM’s vacation home months after her death. According to the police chargesheet, in the early hours of April 4, 2017, an armed gang of 11 people led by Jayalalithaa’s former driver C Kanagaraj entered the estate with the aim of robbing crores of rupees stashed in the house. Investigators said they attacked and sedated security guard Krishna Thapa, and tied him up in a lorry. While two men guarded Thapa, the rest went to another gate and attacked and killed Om Bahadur, another security guard.

Soon afterwards, Kanagaraj, the first accused in the case, was identified and lookout notices were issued. Kanagaraj hailed from Edappadi that is the hometown of former CM and AIADMK leader Edappadi K Palaniswami, or EPS as he is better known. The accused was killed in a road accident on the Salem-Chennai Highway five days after the robbery.

Apart from Kanagaraj, the other accused were from Kerala. The same day the driver was killed in the accident, Sayan from Thrissur, another accused, met with an accident near Palakkad. His car rammed into a parked lorry and while he survived, his wife and daughter did not. A 29-year-old computer operator who worked at the estate, Dinesh Kumar, was found dead in his home in Kotagiri in July that year. The police ruled it a suicide. Meanwhile, Krishna Bahadur returned to Nepal, his home country, and is missing now.

https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/kodanad-estate-heist-probe-stalin-promise-distant-reality-8082953/


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