Aspire Swaminathan’s tweet rekindles interest in Kodanad heist case

Kodanad, the sprawling tea estate of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa, continues to make headlines and attract attention on social media. On Tuesday, it was the turn of former AIADMK IT wing secretary Aspire Swaminathan to recall the infamous case related to Kodanad heist and murder.

“Kodanad murder case is gonna be the final nail in the coffin say highly placed sources…. stay tuned for some super-duper thrilling confessions and revelations,” tweeted Aspire Swaminathan sparking a discussion among AIADMK workers. Efforts to contact Swaminathan, who recently resigned from the AIADMK, proved futile. But party sources close to him said that the former IT wing secretary had some concrete information from investigators about a recent breakthrough in the Kodanad estate murder cases.

Two days ago, ousted AIADMK leader VK Sasikala told Thanthi TV in an interview that Jayalalithaa wanted to stay in Kodanad estate for a month before she was admitted to Apollo Hospitals, where she died of cardiac arrest in 2016. That never happened as doctors advised her not to travel. Since then, the highly secured Kodanad estate started witnessing several mysterious deaths and accidents. All these incidents occurred in 2017 during the AIADMK rule when the state government was headed by then chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami.

A 40-year-old security guard Om Bahadur was found dead with his mouth stuffed with cloth and taped, then one of his associates Krishna Bahadur also sustained grievous injuries informed the police about a robbery attempt.

Two months later, in another mystery, 24-year-old Dinesh Kumar, who worked in the computer section of the Kodanad estate committed suicide at his residence.

Then the police zeroed in on KV Sayan and Kanagaraj suspected to be the mastermind of the heist—murder case. Later Kanagaraj died in a car accident, Sayan also met with a car accident and escaped, but he lost his daughter and wife.  The police could not recover the looted items and the heist and murder cases are pending before courts.

Last year, the prime accused Sayan and Valayar Manoj told the Madras High Court that the prosecution was not allowing them to reveal the truth because the crime involved some high-profile politicians in power.

For the past three years, the DMK has been demanding a detailed probe into this matter and now with DMK coming back to power, the case is again in the news.