Woman claiming to be Jayalalithaa's daughter may undergo DNA test in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Amrutha Sarathy, who claims to be the biological daughter of the late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, has got in touch with a city-based DNA expert through her lawyer in order to have her DNA testing done at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, once the court allows this. 

Ms Sarathy filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court asking for the body of Jayalalithaa to be exhumed in order to collect a DNA sample to prove that Ms Sarathy is the biological daughter of Jayalalithaa. The Supreme Court directed that the plea be filed in the Madras High Court. 

The Madras High Court heard the petition on December 22, 2017, and served notice to the government of Tamil Nadu and the Chennai Municipal Corporation to file their counter reply on why the DNA testing of the late chief minister should not be ordered. On January 5, 2018, the nephew and niece of Jayalalitha, Deepak and Deepa, filed an impleading petition that they should be heard in the case. 

The court then ordered them to submit their counter-affidavit on maintainability of the case (whether the request can be entertained or not) before January 25, 2018 and any reply should be filed before February 2, 2018, when the next hearing of the case will take place.

In view of these developments, Ms Sarathy approached a city-based DNA expert and the CCMB-Hyderabad, whose DNA human genetics wing has the facility to conduct Y-STR (Y-chromosome DNA) and mitochondrial test. The CCMB does such tests frequently and it takes around two months for the result.

The samples will only be collected and tested if the court so orders. This newspaper has learnt that during the arguments in court, the petitioner was asked, why there was no plea to establish the paternal link. 

To which her counsel replied that the petitioner only wants to establish the maternal connection.

In her petition, Amrutha Sarathy says she was brought up as the daughter of Jayalalithaa’s late sister Shylaja and that it was only after the Jayalaithaa’s demise that she came to know through her aunts L.S. Lalitha and Ranjani Ravindranath, that she is Jayalalithaa’s biological daughter. Lalitha and Ranjani are related to Jayalalithaa, according to Amrutha.

Amrutha states that when she was born on August 14, 1980, at Jayalalithaa’s Mylapore residence in Chennai, an “understanding” was arrived at between Jayalalithaa and her family members that the birth would not be disclosed, to “uphold the dignity of the family as they belong to a very religious, orthodox and cultured Brahmin family” and her birth would come as a shock to everyone.