CHENNAI: The Income Tax Department has attached assets worth Rs 2,000 crore belonging to former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's close aide V K Sasikala, her sister-in-law Ilavarasi and V N Sudhakaran including bungalows at Siruthavur on the outskirts of Chennai and at Kodanad in the Nilgiris.
The assets were attached by the Benami Prohibition wing of the Income Tax Department. Sasikala, Ilavarasi and Sudhakaran are serving a four-year sentence in a disproportionate assets case.
This comes in the wake of the Benami Prohibition unit in Chennai provisionally attaching properties in and around the city worth Rs 300 crore. Sasikala is said to have purchased these properties, including a site across the road from late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s Veda Nilayam residence, through shell companies.
I-T sources said that a notice had been served to Sasikala at the Parappana Agrahara Prison in Bengaluru, the benami company and the various Sub-Registrar Offices (SROs) under whose jurisdiction the properties are situated.
The provisional order of the attachment has been issued under section 24(3) of the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, 1988. The tax department had conducted massive raids against Sasikala and a few others in 2017 and it is understood that the documents about these assets were recovered then.