Jaya slams Karuna for 'convoluted' defence of Kanimozhi

Chennai, Apr 30: Tearing into her arch-rival and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi's "convoluted defence" of his daughter Kanimozhi on the 2G scam issue, AIADMK supremo Jayalalithaa today demanded that his entire family be chargesheeted "if the interest of justice are to be met".

"Karunanidhi has characteristically put forth a convoluted defence of his daughter..," she said in a statement responding to the DMK chief''s strong defence of Kanimozhi, chargesheeted in the 2G case.

Describing as "balderdash" Karunanidhi's contention that he was defending Kanimozhi for the sake of the party's image and that she was a party worker, Jayalalithaa wondered if he expected his party workers to believe this.

At Wednesday's high-level meeting of DMK convened in the wake of Kanimozhi being chargesheeted, where the party decided to fight the issue legally, an emotional Karunanidhi had said he was defending her to save the party''s image.

According to the CBI charge sheet, Kanimozhi had allegedly entered into a criminal conspiracy with prime accused former Union Telecom Minister A Raja and received illegal gratification through Kalaignar TV to which the money related to 2G scam was routed.

Jayalalithaa also said that Karunanidhi had denied the scam itself and sought to blame the developments relating to it as part of "an upper-caste conspiracy against his brand of Dravidian politics."

Karunanidhi "when cornered, (would) throw muck all round and send everyone scurrying for cover, while he seeks an escape route...," she alleged.

She said the 2G cases were filed by the CBI, not under a rival political dispensation seeking political vengeance, but on the instructions of Central government in which Karunanidhi's DMK was an "endemic part."

Posing a set of questions on the contentious transfer of Rs 214 crore from DB Realty to Kalaignar TV, she asked why a reality firm from Mumbai should invest in a just-launched Chennai-based TV channel. She also sought to know why the TV channel "suddenly" decided to convert the amount into an "unsecured loan" as soon as CBI filed a case and began interrogating Raja.

It would be better if Karunanidhi, instead of "pushing the blame on to all and sundry, does some serious introspection," she said.

"As for the CBI, I insist that it has fallen short by naming only Kanimozhi in the charge sheet. The entire Karunanidhi family is involved. All have benefited. And all should be chargesheeted if the interests of justice are to be met," she demanded.

PTI