CHENNAI: Ten days before she was asked to appear before a Delhi court in connection with a money-laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate, Karunanidhi’s wife Dayalu Ammal was hospitalised for ‘dehydration’. She was also kept at the hospital overnight for safety’s sake.
Coming just a day after the DMK suffered their worst whitewash in a parliamentary election yet, party cadre were further dampened by the news that Dayalu Ammal had taken ill at such a time. “She had been unwell for a couple of days and she is also quite old. This hospitalisation is just for safety sake,” was the practiced reply from Anna Arivalayam.
Sources in Apollo Hospitals on Greams Road confirmed that Dayalu Ammal (83) had been brought to their emergency ward and admitted late on Saturday evening, “in an extremely dehyrated and confused state”. “Dayalu Ammal was admitted to Apollo Hospitals with some dehydration. She is under our care and recovering well. She is expected to be discharged within the next two days,” said a spokesperson for the hospital. Under the care of BC Roy National Awardee Dr T V Devarajan, Dayalu Ammal is being kept in hospital overnight.
The last time that the DMK patriarch’s second wife - and mother of their ‘thalapathy’ M K Stalin - was subjected to the company of doctors, was last July. Significantly, a four-member team of medical experts from the AIIMS had flown down on the direction of the Supreme Court and examined her for two hours to ascertain whether she was “mentally sound.”
Her lawyers had appealed to the SC and the CBI to exempt Dayalu from appearing in court in the Kalaignar TV money laundering case because she was ‘losing track of her cognitive senses, acting abrasively and prone to inappropriate talk and actions’.