Jaya issues legal notices to three media organisations

Chennai, Mar 7: While the elections round the corner political parties will begin the muck throwing game. As such, AIADMK cheif and Tamil Nadu Cheif Minister's arch rival J Jayalalithaa on Monday, Mar 7 has sent legal notices to the media organisations, including DMK owned channel 'Kalaignar TV.'

Jayalalithaa issued legal notices to three media organisations for carrying frivolous reports linking her to Pune-based businessman Hassan Ali Khan, accused of stashing black money abroad. She said that she will take legal action if they failed to respond to her notice.

In the notice issued through her counsel PH Manoj Pandiyan to "Mid-day", "Murasoli TV", besides "Kalaignar TV", Jayalalithaa demanded an unconditional apology from the three media organisations.

Pandiyan claimed "My client states that the report by Mid-Day quotes an anonymous investigating officer as saying that investigations into huge cache of money in the possession of Hasan Ali Khan, who is in the center of a controversy for reportedly evading Income Tax to the tune of several thousand crores, pointed to a woman politician, who was also Chief Minister of a state from South India''.

"This is mischievous, scurrilous, malicious and insinuating journalism at its very worst," he added. Pandian said "Jayalalithaa categorically makes known that she has nothing whatsoever to do with Hasan Ali."

Furthermore, he said that it was she who had issued statements and pressed for action against persons who have stashed black money in foreign banks.

He said "the Mid-Day report became the source for Murasoli and Kalaignar TV which identified the "woman Chief Minister as Jayalalithaa in a highly defammtory, slanderous report in the Tamil daily which was also broadcast in Kalaignar TV."

The report was conceived through "sheer imagination" and published without any verification and with ulterior motive, he said in the notice.

"My client states that the above referred news item does not contain an iota of truth. The news item is false, frivolous and defamatory with the intention of maligning my client in order to cause loss of reputation to her and the party she leads," he said.

Saying that Jayalalithaa had suffered loss due to the report that cannot be quantified, Pandian said the dailies should tender unconditional apology and publish it in the first page, while Kalaignar TV has to broadcast the same.

"It has to be done immediately on receipt of this notice by all of you, failing which my client would be constrained to institute necessary and appropriate civil and criminal action against you. Jointly and severally to restrain you from indulging in such reckless, frivolous and irresponsible allegations and publishing the same, apart from claiming damages for the loss of reputation," he said.

PTI