Jaya’s death: Probe pointless

It took a Supreme Court order to halt the proceedings of the Justice Arumughaswamy Commission that was probing the circumstances leading to the death of former Tamil Nadu CM J. Jayalalithaa. The panel was appointed in August 2017 to inquire into her death at a corporate hospital in December 2016 after extensive treatment over 75 days. The retired judge was seen to be straying into areas like the nature of treatment, on which he had no expertise, and without the help of independent medical experts. The appointment of the panel was itself politically driven — it was one of the conditions on which deputy CM O. Panneerselvam reconciled his differences with CM Edappadi Palaniswami's AIADMK faction. The judge seemed to wish to get into the political aspects of the Jaya case than stick to his brief.

The former judge was also said to be leaning towards ferreting out any truth behind the conspiracy theories, an abundance of which was available in the lives of Jaya and her aide Sasikala. The pointlessness of non-forensic probes is itself inhibiting enough not to start them. The death of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in Tashkent is another event about which there are any number of theories. The world is yet to glean the real truth behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the Warren Commission raised more questions than finding answers, despite being vested with extraordinary powers. The followers of great leaders may wish to know what happened to them in the end, but curiosity alone may not be sufficient grounds on which to initiate judicial probes that may leave none of us any the wiser.