NEW DELHI // J Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, was sentenced to four years in jail on Sunday in Bangalore under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Jayalalithaa was also fined a billion rupees (Dh60 million) after being convicted of amassing illegal wealth, in a lawsuit dating back to 1996.
During an investigation in 1997, police seized 29 kilograms of gold, 760 pairs of shoes and about 10,000 saris from her home.
On the announcement of the court verdict yesterday, a blanket of police security was thrown over the state, with particular attention to Jayalalithaa’s party headquarters in Chennai, in order to prevent violence by party workers.
Despite the police presence, there were reports of stones thrown and clashes between Jayalalithaa’s supporters and a cadre of rival parties from across the state last night.
Jayalalithaa is expected to appeal against the verdict. But she will have to step down immediately as chief minister and give up her seat in the Tamil Nadu assembly, following a supreme court decision last year that barred legislators convicted of serious crimes from serving in legislatures. She is the first chief minister to lose her post because of a court conviction.
Jayalalithaa will spend a decade in political exile as she is prohibited from contesting an election for six years following the end of her jail term. But her party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), will remain in power and it can name another AIADMK legislator as chief minister.
Since the party revolves around Jayalalithaa, she is likely to nominate a loyalist to the post while she serves her sentence.
The verdict marks the culmination of an 18-year legal process, dating back to the 1996 lawsuit filed by a rival politician, Subramanian Swamy.
Mr Swamy claimed she possessed assets – worth 660 million rupees – that were disproportionate to her income. The prosecution accused Jayalalithaa of purchasing defunct companies and laundering money obtained through graft and corruption.
Three of her aides were also named in the lawsuit and were convicted yesterday. They were each jailed for four years and fined 100 million rupees (Dh6 million).
In 2003, the case moved from the Madras high court to a special court in Bangalore, in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, for fear of political interference, given that Jayalalithaa was chief minister at the time.
A film star who joined the AIADMK in the early 1980s, Jayalalithaa, 66, became chief minister of Tamil Nadu in 1991. Her long political career was frequently tarnished by allegations of corruption. She fought more than a dozen corruption cases over the past 15 years, but was acquitted each time.
The AIADMK’s cadre earned a reputation for violence in 2000, after a lower court convicted Jayalalithaa of corruption, sentencing her to a year in prison. She only served a month of the term before being acquitted by the Madras high court, but AIADMK workers took to the streets to protest.
AIADMK workers stopped a bus near the town of Dharmapuri and ordered university students to disembark. They set it on fire but three women were unable to escape in time and burnt to death.
Yesterday, as rumours of stone-throwing incidents and clashes between the AIADMK workers and rival parties spread through Chennai, people stayed in their homes and shopkeepers closed their businesses early in the evening.
“I was planning to meet some friends for a drink in the evening, after work,” said S Vijay, who works for a software firm. “Instead, I went straight home. And I messaged everybody I knew to park their vehicles indoors, because I had heard that AIADMK men were going around smashing windshields in protest at the verdict.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
* with additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
