JOIN USSeeking to make a strong pitch for his daughter’s innocence, the DMK leader explained that Kanimozhi’s role in ‘Kalaignar TV’ was largely on account of “my prodding”. He explained that she had invested Rs 2 crore as her share-capital in the channel. That amount was Kanimozhi’s share in the family, when Dayalu Ammal (Karunanidhi’s elder wife) had disinvested from SUN TV (of Maran family) in October 2005.
“Kanimozhi was reluctant, but she consented only in deference to her father’s word; she has done no other wrong,” asserted Karunanidhi.
Meanwhile, on Saturday night senior DMK leaders confabulated at Karunadhi’s Gopalapuram residence till midnight—the fallout of Kanimozhi being sent to jail. Visibly trying to express his displeasure with the Congress, Karunanidh said DMK Parliamentary party leader T R Baalu would attend the dinner being hosted by the prime minister to mark UPA’s second anniversary in New Delhi late on Sunday night.
Significantly, Karunanidhi himself has planned to go to Delhi on Monday to meet Kanimozhi, A Raja and Sharad Reddy, lodged in Tihar jail. But he, however, added that “there may not be an opportunity” to call on Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, indicating all is not well in the DMK-Congress ties.
Acknowledging that “these are trying times for the DMK after a massive defeat” in the recent Assembly polls, Karunanidhi in a long letter to his party cadres published in the party organ ‘Murasoli’ on Sunday, was aghast that Kanimozhi was denied bail by a CBI special court.
The DMK patriarch underscored that corporate governance principles did not require that shareholders of a company, while partaking in both its losses and profits, had to take responsibility for all day-to-day activities of the firm including its financial transactions.
Despite Jethmalani’s emphatic arguments, Kanimozhi and ‘Kalaignar TV’s Managing Director, Sharad Kumar Reddy, were denied bail by the court and sent to jail, Karunanidhi said.
Claiming another dimension to the recent happenings, Karunanidhi also saw an “element of political vendetta by a small group of conspirators in the way my family members and I are being avenged.”
Without naming anybody, the DMK chief said, “they have avenged us successfully”. “But they don’t want to stop with this; they want our entire family, place, our belongings and party office to be totally obliterated, so that only kusa grass may then grow there,” he alleged.