Woman claiming to be Karunanidhi's granddaughter moves HC for access to father

Chennai: A woman, claiming to be the daughter of DMK president M Karunanidhi’s eldest son MK Muthu, on Thursday moved Madras high court, alleging that he was being kept confined by her stepbrother.

In a habeas corpus petition, MKM Sheeba Rani claimed she was born to Muthu and her mother, his second wife. She raised doubts if her 75-year-old father was alive or not, and sought a direction to the police to produce him in court.

A habeas corpus petition is filed seeking to produce a person, alleged to be confined illegally, before the court.

Rani also alleged that her stepbrother Arivunidhi might have kept Muthu illegally confined.

A division bench comprising justices CT Selvam and N Sathish Kumar ordered notice to the city police commissioner and Arivunidhi, and posted the matter after two weeks.

In her petition, Rani claimed her mother and Muthu had married in 1988 and she was born to them in June, 1991.

She alleged that Arivunidhi had intimidated them and warned them not to meet Muthu and forced them to move out of their house at Lloyds Colony in the city.

Rani also claimed police failed to act on her complaint in this regard and said she could meet Muthu after several efforts, at Tiruvarur, in 2015.

She also submitted that subsequent efforts to meet her ‘father’ had failed as Arivunidhi continued to threaten them.