A provisional attachment order was displayed on Wednesday at the sprawling prime property in Poes Garden, where a modern mansion is being built, reportedly for V K Sasikala, late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa’s aide, to live in after her release from jail.
Situated opposite to Veda Nilayam, the Poes Garden residence of Jayalalithaa that was also Sasikala’s official address for a long time, the nine ground, 860 square feet property has been registered in the name of Sri Hari Chandana Estate Pvt Ltd.
Since the Income Tax department had found out through investigations that the property belonged to Sasikala they had also sent her a copy of the attachment order to her. The attachment copy has been despatched to the Parappana Agrahara jail address in Bengaluru, where Sasikala is now lodged.
I-T department is said to have identified 65 such properties worth Rs 300 crore across Chennai and has initiated moves to attach them all in places like Alandur, Sriperumbudur, Tambaram and so on. These properties had been bought between 2003 and 2005 through benami transactions.
Sasikala had been under the I-T department’s scanner for a long time and had been raided several times. Through a raid in 2017, tax violations running to several crores of rupees were detected and many properties were freezed in 2019.
The latest investigation that led to the unearthing of the Poes Garden and other properties was launched very recently after news reports appeared on a house for Sasikala being built close to Veda Nilayam, which has been taken over by the government to convert it into a memorial for Jayalalithaa.
