Police in Salem district have decided to further investigate the death of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's driver C Kanagaraj. Salem Superintendent of Police M Sree Abhinav has given instructions for a further probe into Kanagaraj's death under suspicious circumstances, sources said.
The 36-year-old driver, who had served Jayalalithaa and her close aide V K Sasikala, was killed when a car (with Karnataka registration) knocked him down while he was travelling to the house of a relative in his motorcycle near Attur on the night of April 28, 2017. Kanagaraj's brother Dhanapal suspected foul play behind his brother's death. Following a complaint lodged by him, Attur Town police had investigated the case. Police officers at the time claimed that Kanagaraj's death was accidental.
Kanagaraj was a key suspect in the killing of a security guard at the late Chief Minister's Kodanad estate, Om Bahadur, during a break-in. The assailants attacked Om Bahadur and Krishna Bahadur, both security guards at the estate, before fleeing, allegedly, with some important documents. Sayan, another accused in the Om Bahadur murder case, was seriously injured in a road accident while a computer operator of the estate Dinesh Kumar, 29, died by suicide following apparent vision loss despite surgeries.
In 2019, a former Tehelka journalist Mathew Samuel held a press briefing flanked by Sayan and V Manoj, both accused in the Kodanad case, and claimed that former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswamy was behind the break-in and suspicious deaths linked to the estate. However, Palaniswamy had dismissed the allegations as baseless.
After the DMK government led by M K Stalin came to power, Chief Minister MK Stalin reminded the state assembly that bringing out the truth in the Kodanad murder-cum-robbery case was part of the electoral promise of his party and it is being done on the orders of the court.