Bengaluru: Expelled AIADMK general secretary VK Sasikala was discharged from the Victoria Hospital here even as her supporters thronged the hospital gates and greeted her with flowers. Some supporters prostrated in a show of sycophancy as Sasikala drove out of the hospital. And she sent out a message loud and clear by leaving in a car that once belonged to former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and bearing the AIADMK flag on its bonnet.
Instead of going to Chennai, she checked in to a luxury resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Though the official reason was that she wanted to take rest for the next few days, sources said that she would be using the resort as the base to plan her moves in Tamil Nadu politics.
Her nephew and AMMK party chief TTV Dinakaran justified the move of using the party flag saying, “She is the AIADMK General Secretary. She was unanimously nominated to that post in December 2016. We have been stating this since then and have been fighting for in the court as well. She is the one who has to take all political decisions. That is what AMMK has said even back then and we say even now."
She also discarded the wheelchair and climbed down the stairs of the hospital on her own.
In February 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s conviction against Sasikala and her two relatives in the disproportionate assets case. Just prior to her conviction, Sasikala, as the AIADMK General Secretary, handpicked Edappadi Palaniswami to become Chief Minister. However, the AIADMK expelled her from the party in September 2017 expelled by the AIADMK as part of a merger deal that EPS struck with O Panneerselvam, who had rebelled against her.
