An Empire Cowed

Massive income tax raids rattle the Sasikala clan

- Lakshmi Subramanian

One hundred and eighty-seven simultaneous raids by 1,800 officials! In per-haps the biggest operation in its history, officers of the income tax department in the second week of November swooped down and shook the foundations of what was till recently the most powerful clan in Tamil Nadu, the family of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa’s friend V.K. Sasikala, a family that is known as Mannargudi Mafia.

At 6am on November 9, a car bearing the words “Srini weds Mahi” reached the office of Jaya TV at Ekkattuthangal, Chennai. The members of the ‘wedding party’ were actually IT officers who had come to search the premises. At the same time, similar teams, all in “Srini weds Mahi” vehicles, were raiding properties of people and entities related to Sasikala—properties of her brother V. Dhivakaran, Midas Distilleries, office and theatres of Jazz Cinemas, Kodanad and Curzon estates, and various locations in Tiruchirappalli, Mannargudi, Coimbatore, Puducherry, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The IT department hired more than 1,500 cars for the operation and roped in bank officers to overcome manpower shortage.