Jayalalithaa Death Inquiry Put On Hold By Top Court Over Apollo Petition

The Supreme Court has put on hold the proceedings of a commission set up to investigate the death of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa in 2016.

The decision comes after Chennai's Apollo Hospitals, where the former AIADMK chief spent her final weeks, challenged the summons to its doctors and the demand for the hospital records.

The hospital wanted the probe proceedings to be put on hold. The Supreme Court bench was headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi.

The Tamil Nadu government has objected to the top court's stay, saying that 90 per cent of the investigation has been completed.

On April 4, the Madras High Court rejected the hospital's objection against the ongoing probe into the death of the AIADMK leader at the hospital.

Today, Apollo Hospitals argued that the commission even wanted the records of AIADMK founder and former Tamil Nadu chief minister MG Ramachandran or MGR's treatment in the US.

The AIADMK-led state government had set up the inquiry commission, headed by retired High Court judge Justice A Arumughaswamy, in September 2017 to look into the circumstances leading to the death of Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016 at Apollo Hospitals.

The hospital had told the high court earlier that this was the first time in independent India that a commission of inquiry was allowed to go into the correctness of the medical treatment given to a political leader.

J Jayalalithaa died on December 5, 2016, after being treated at Chennai's Apollo Hospital for 75 days.

Alleging there was a big mystery around be death, Tamil Nadu's opposition DMK had demanded that the matter be investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

(With inputs from PTI)