The Madras High Court on Thursday, September 21, issued an interim order restraining Tamil Nadu Minister Udhayanidhi Stalin from passing comments on former Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, in relation to the Kodanad estate murder and robbery case. The order was issued against DMK leader Udhayanidhi after AIADMK general secretary EPS filed a civil suit over alleged defamatory comments. EPS was the Chief Minister when the Kodanad incident happened, and in his disputed comments, Udhayanidhi purportedly suggested that the former CM was involved in the incident. EPS also sought Rs 1.1 crore in damages over the remarks.
Justice RN Manjula said that although it is customary for political leaders to make statements against each other, Udhayanidhi’s comments were found “defamatory” and “damaging to the reputation of the petitioner”, and an interim gag order was issued against Udhayanidhi from making such statement. The court also ordered Udhayanidhi to file his response in two weeks.
The Kodanad case, which dates back to 2017, had shook the state at the time. According to the chargesheet filed by the police, a gang of eleven people led by C Kanagaraj, a former driver at former CM J Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence, allegedly hatched a conspiracy to rob Jayalalithaa’s residence in Kodanad of the Nilgiris district. Kanagaraj and his co-conspirators purportedly believed that crores of cash was stashed in the house. The gang allegedly attempted their heist on the night of April 23, 2017.
Once they broke open the gate and entered the bungalow, they tied up one security guard, and allegedly attacked and killed another guard named Om Bahadur.
Neither the crime nor the mystery surrounding the case ended there. In the five months that would follow, four people related to the case also died. Five days after the heist-murder, Kanagaraj was killed in an accident on the Salem-Chennai highway in Attur. Kanagaraj reportedly belonged to Edappadi, the same village as EPS. The same day, the second accused in the case Sayan met with an accident near Palakkad, after his car rammed into a parked lorry. The accident claimed the lives of his wife and daughter, but Sayan escaped with injuries. In July 2017, a computer operator working on the Kodanad estate, Dinesh Kumar, was found dead at his residence in Kotagiri, and the death was ruled a suicide.
While the police filed a 300-page chargesheet, allegations of lapses in the investigation were raised. In 2021, three of the accused filed a petition seeking the interrogation of EPS, Jayalalithaa’s close aide Sasikala, the then Nilgiris district Collector and police chief among others, alleging that the real culprits in the case had escaped. However, their petition was dismissed by the Nilgiris Sessions Court that was hearing the case at the time.
Read: Four years, five deaths and a burglary: The Kodanad heist and murder case
Meanwhile, in connection with Udhayanidhi’s comments against him, EPS approached the Madras High Court saying that he had not been summoned even once during the five-year investigation into the Kodanad case. Terming the DMK leader’s comments “false accusations to tarnish my reputation”, EPS also alleged that the comments were made keeping the 2024 general elections in mind.