‘Jaya’s hospital stay footage unavailable’

CHENNAI:THE closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa’s hospital stay before her death in December 2016 is unavailable.

Maimoona Badshah, the lawyer of Apollo Hospitals, where Jayalalithaa was admitted in Chennai, said CCTV recordings get overwritten automatically after 30 days. “We disclosed the information to the judicial commission probing the death of the former chief minister on September 11,” Badshah told reporters on Wednesday.

Retired high court judge A Aarumugaswamy’s judicial commission, probing the death, had directed the Apollo Hospitals last week to submit the CCTV footage of Jayalalithaa’s stay there.

Badshah’s statement contradicts Apollo Hospitals’ chairman Pratap C Reddy’s claim that all CCTV cameras had been switched off in Jayalalithaa’s room during her hospitalisation.

“Since Jayalalithaa was a VVIP, we switched off the CCTV cameras at her room between September 22, 2016, and December 5, 2016,” Reddy told reporters in March.

Badshah claimed that they have not changed anything and it is an automatic process. “...every 30 days, the server automatically deletes the existing data and overwrites it. So we are unable to produce the exact footage before the inquiry commission. This is regular,” Badshah said.

Many, including deputy chief minister O Panneerselvam, had raised doubts over Jayalalithaa’s death and demanded an inquiry into it last year. The chief minister had ordered the constitution of the inquiry panel in September 2017 to look into the circumstances leading to Jayalalithaa’s death in December 2016 after a 75-day hospitalisation.

AIADMK leaders refused to comment on the issue.