Bengaluru: It seems controversies and Jayalalithaa are inseparable even after death. Just a week before her first death anniversary, a 37-year-old woman has claimed to be her daughter.
Amrutha, whose petition for a DNA test was denied by the Supreme Court on Monday, has always been in the shadow of limelight. She was often seen with a woman named Shylaja, who used to claim that she was Jaya's sister. Shylaja gave several interviews to Kannada and Tamil media, requesting Jayalalithaa to acknowledge their relationship, but it never arrived.
Shylaja claimed she was the third child of Jaya's mother Sandhya. According to her, their father Jayaram died before she was born. Later, she was given away to an art director named Damodar. But she had no evidence to prove her claim, which was met with total silence from Poes Garden.
A few years ago, Shylaja died and people thought that was the end of it.
After Jayalalithaa's death, Amrutha appeared on a few Kannada TV channels and claimed that she was the only daughter of Jaya. She said Jayalalithaa gave her away to Shylaja as she was scared of the social stigma attached to being an unmarried woman with a kid. She even claimed that she had met Jayalalithaa at her Poes Garden residence on a few occasions and once spent a month there.
NK Mohanram, a retired Doordarshan producer, who authored a book “Amma Aada Ammu Jayalalithaa (How Ammu Jayalalithaa became Amma) on her early life in Mysore and Bengaluru, said he gets the impression that the claims are not very convincing.
"Jayalalithaa was a mysterious woman. Nobody can claim that he or she knows something about her. When I started writing this book, I met many of her relatives in Mysore, Bengaluru and Chennai. Most of them refused to share information or talk about Jaya. I had met Shylaja and Amrutha. Their story is quiet stunning. But I can't say for sure that it is true," he said.
However, he said that all of them have some resemblance. He said that Jaya's mother Sandhya had an elder sister Jayalakshmi. Sandhya gave Shyalaja to her and she gave her to an art director called Pillai. But there is no evidence to prove that.
Shyalaja said she had given all the documents to a journalist called Sangam Dev but he did not return it to her. A few years ago, Dev was working for a Kannada tabloid "Hi Bengaluru".
His phone was switched off when this correspondent tried to contact him. Author Mohanram claims that Sangam Dev has stopped interacting with the media people and left the profession. "I tried to contact him through several of my friends in the media. But nobody knows where he is now," he said.
Speaking to News18, Amrutha said she was not fighting the case for Jayalalithaa’s money. “She is my mother and I want to prove that to the entire World. That’s it. I need nothing else”.
She also said that Jaya confidante O Panneerselvam was aware of everything and she was introduced to him as Jaya’s daughter. Talking about her childhood, she said, “My mother Jayalalithaa was worried that someone might harm me, because of that I was raised in total secrecy”.
She added that she will go to Karnataka High Court as advised by the Supreme Court.
Deepa Jayakumar, niece of Jayalalithaa, rubbished these claims as fake. She said her grandmother had only two children - her father Jayakumar and aunt Jayalalithaa.
Comments
0 comment