Chennai : Banu Sridhar, one of the five adopted daughters of the legendary actor-turned-Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M G Ramachandran (MGR) was on Wednesday awarded life imprisonment by a court here, in connection with the murder of the late politician’s foster son-in-law Vijayan alias Vijayakumar eight years ago.
A police constable (since dismissed) Karuna, who had executed the murder at her behest, and five hirelings were also sentenced to jail for life by the Principal Sessions Judge Jayachandran.
Banu, a school correspondent, had emerged as a surprise suspect in the case. The core of the dispute dates back to the eighties when MGR, who had no offspring from his two wives including V N Janaki, who upon MGR’s death succeeded him for less than a month as Chief Minister, wrote a will bequeathing his properties.
The popular actor-turned-politician had bequeathed his properties to five adopted daughters, all born to Janaki’s brother, and named Rajendran, the husband of one of the foster daughters Latha, as the executioner of the will.
Soon after MGR’s death in December 1987, the inheritors to his will began fighting over the execution of the will. Vijayan, who was married to Sudha, an adopted daughter, had crossed swords with Rajendran and taken the matter to court. This led to multiple parties to the case filing one petition or the other. At one point the Madras High Court appointed retired judge Justice Sivasubramanian to find a solution to the battle over the will and in his report the judge threw his hands in desperation at the hostilities among the siblings.
Amidst all this, Banu, who was not among those publicly fighting for the property, had a feud with her brother Raja alias Dileepan over the administration of the Janaki Ramachandran Matriculation School in Chennai. She suspected that her brother was being influenced by Vijayan and hatched a conspiracy to eliminate the latter.
Banu got in touch with a police constable Karuna, who hired goons and killed Vijayan after intercepting his car on the evening of June 4, 2008 in Kotturpuram in Chennai.
Immediately after the murder, Vijayan’s wife Sudha had filed a complaint pointing fingers at her sister Latha and Rajendran as it is with them her husband was constantly at loggerheads. The police interrogated Latha, who was the correspondent of the Dr MGR Janaki College for Women, and Rajendran.
Later the case was transferred to the Crime Branch-CID, who picked up some clues and eventually arrested Banu much to the surprise of the warring family members. At that time, Latha who was not on talking terms with her sister had reacted, in disbelief: “I don’t know what is going on. We are all shocked. I don’t know whether she (Banu) is capable of doing it (murder).”
On Wednesday the trial judge pointing to telephonic conversation records conclusively held that Banu had plotted the murder with the help of Karuna.
However, holding that the murder did not fall within the ambit of the “rarest of rare” cases, he desisted from awarding the death sentence and instead imposed a life term on all the accused.
The police took all seven into immediate custody. Vijayan’s wife Sudha expressed happiness over the verdict.
