Enforcement Directorate summons T T V Dhinakaran in EC 'bribery' case

Dhinakaran is accused of trying to bribe officials of the ECI to get a favourable verdict for the faction led by his aunt in the two leaves symbol case

The five-year-old case relating to the alleged bribing of Election Commission of India (ECI) officials to get the Two Leaves symbol of AIADMK to his faction has come back to haunt party rebel T T V Dhinakaran with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) summoning him.

While the ED has asked Dhinakaran to appear before it on April 8, a lawyer named Gopinath, who was a junior to Dhinakaran’s advocate Mohanraj in the bribery case, died by suicide on Wednesday. Gopinath is said to be a witness in the case registered in April 2017 after Delhi Police arrest conman Sukesh Chandrashekar from a five-star hotel in the national capital.

Police said Gopinath was found dead at his home on Wednesday while refusing to disclose the reason for his extreme step. Gopinath, who was practising in Poonamallee court, was working as a junior to Mohanraj who was raided and questioned by Delhi Police in the two leaves bribery case.

Dhinakaran, V K Sasikala’s nephew and chief of the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK), is accused of trying to bribe officials of the ECI to get a favourable verdict for the faction led by his aunt in the two leaves symbol case.

The decision to question Dhinakaran, who spent over a month in Tihar jail in the case in 2017 after being arrested by Delhi Police, comes close on the heels of the ED recording Chandrashekar’s statement. The ECI had in March 2017 froze AIADMK’s two leaves symbol for the R K Nagar by-elections after the party split into two factions – one led by Sasikala and Dhinakaran and another by O Panneerselvam.

Though the by-election in which Dhinakaran was AIADMK (Sasikala) faction’s candidate was rescinded due to allegations of rampant use of money power, the AIADMK rebel is accused of trying to bribe officials to get the verdict in his favour.

Dhinakaran, who was expelled from the AIADMK in 2017, went on to win the bye-elections from R K Nagar, a constituency represented by J Jayalalithaa and formed AMMK. Though AMMK scored 5 per cent votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the party failed miserably in the 2021 assembly polls.

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