Jayalalithaa’s Kodanad estate: Grand British bungalow to ‘house of murders’

The sun is just starting out, and the birds beginning to chirp. Workers are walking along the tea estates, with large baskets to collect leaves hanging on their backs and smaller baskets in their hands holding their tiffin boxes and water bottles. The weather is a pleasant mid-point between scorching heat and biting cold.

Yet, a murder that rocked the area — in Tamil Nadu’s Kodanad — four years ago is row rearing its head again.

In April 2017, Om Bahadur, a watchman employed at the Kodanad estate of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa, was found murdered. A gang of robbers was said to be behind the crime. However, road accidents subsequently left two of the main accused dead, triggering talk of foul play.

Fresh summons

Now, the topic is back in the news, with the Nilgiris police issuing fresh summons to Sayan, the ‘accused No 2’ in the case. The case is likely to come up for hearing on August 27. The AIADMK, now in the Opposition, has accused the ruling DMK of false implication and a political witch hunt. However, the DMK has maintained that it is just fulfilling its election promise of a complete probe, and is now doing its duty.

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The AIADMK has enough reasons to be worried. Former Chief Minister and party co-coordinator Edappadi K Palaniswami (EPS) is under the investigation radar. Some of the accused in the case are, in one way or the other, linked to Salem and its surrounding areas, from where EPS hails. Earlier this week, AIADMK MLAs headed by EPS met Governor Banwarilal Purohit in this regard.

This is only the latest intrigue linked to Kodanad. A brief history of the small, picturesque village in Kotagiri, in the Nilgiris, reveals several twists and turns down the centuries.

Product of British Raj

Nestled among the lush tea estates of Kodanad lies a white bungalow, steeped in grandeur and ostentation. The people of Tamil Nadu for long have associated the building, and Kodanad, with Jayalalithaa.

But Kodanad was originally developed as a hill resort by the British, probably drawn by its hospitable climate. It was here that the Raj introduced coffee estates for the first time in the hills. In 1843, Montague Dundas Cockburn, the then district collector of Salem, introduced coffee plantation on the Yercaud hills, and replicated it in Kotagiri.

However, the first tea estate was introduced in Coonoor around 1853. It is claimed that Margaret Cockburn, the daughter of Cockburn, introduced the first tea plantation in Kotagiri in 1863 and the very next year, the Kodanad Tea Estate was established.

After changing several hands, the estate finally landed with William Jones, a foreign national, in 1975. When he bought the property for ₹33 lakh, it sprawled over 1,000 acres. The Jones family sold about 100 acres later and retained 906 acres.

In 1976, his son Peter Karl Edward Craig Jones arrived at Kodanad to administer the estate. Witnessing the good yield, he launched a tea processing company named Kodanad Tea Estate Pvt Ltd.

All was well for the Joneses till 1992. It was then that Jayalalithaa, in her first stint as Chief Minister, and her associates wanted to buy a property in the Nilgiris. Their eyes fell on the Kodanad estate, and the negotiations took two years. Finally, in 1994, Jayalalithaa bought the 906 acres. Peter Jones has alleged in several interviews that he was forced to accept a price of just ₹7.6 crore.

A summer Secretariat

Following her failure in the 2006 Assembly elections, Jayalalithaa spent most of the next five years at the Kodanad bungalow. The weather and the calmness made her decide to work from the bungalow even if she won the next elections. In line with this plan, she built an additional floor.

The two-floor bungalow now has facilities such as a VIP hall, conference hall which can accommodate 100 persons at a time, common dining hall and all the facilities one can find in the Chief Minister’s office at St George Fort, Chennai. A mini hospital too operated in the bungalow. The estate also had a 10-acre lake with a luxury boat, 10-acre floriculture farm and servants’ quarters.

As she had earlier decided, after her victory in the 2011 elections, Kodanad estate became the de facto summer office of Jayalalithaa. There was even an oral order that the letters sent to Kodanad must be addressed as ‘Tamil Nadu Chief Minister’s Camp Office’.

A fortress on the hills

The estate has 13 entrances and only the 9th and 10th gates lead to the bungalow. Until Jatalalithaa’s demise, the estate had police protection with numerous CCTV cameras. About 640 police personnel were deployed. After her death, all the guards were withdrawn and cameras were removed from some places.

When an asset disproportionate case was filed against Jayalalithaa in 1996, she said that she had no connection with the estate. It was owned by her friend Sasikala and others, she added.

However, in 2000, she became a shareholder in the estate. “When I joined my capital was ₹1.8 lakh. This has been accepted by the income tax department. At that time, the estate was running into losses worth ₹6.6 lakh. It was only from 2004 the estate started to earn moderate profit. In the last five years, I haven’t taken even ₹1,” she said in a statement in June 2007.

She stepped out from her shareholder capacity in April 2006 citing election work and again joined in June that year. “When I came out I had to pay ₹1.92 lakh as my contribution. So, I haven’t profited from being a shareholder of the estate,” she added.

House of mysterious murders

On December 5, 2016, Jayalalithaa died following a long illness, at Apollo Hospital in Chennai. O Panneerselvam (OPS) became the temporary CM. When Sasikala became the general secretary of the AIADMK on December 31, OPS was removed from the CM post.

OPS staged a ‘dharmayuddham’ on February 7, 2017. The drama came to an end when Sasikala was sentenced to four years imprisonment in an asset disproportionate case. Before going to prison, she chose EPS as the CM. When a row was brewing between the OPS and EPS factions, the BJP in the Centre allegedly played a role in bringing them together. OPS was made the party coordinator and Deputy CM on August 21, 2017, while EPS remained the CM.

The murders recorded in the estate happened around that time. The first murder, that of Om Bahadur, one of the security guards at the estate, occurred on April 27, 2017. It is alleged that an 11-member gang entered through gate number 10 and attempted a break-in. Another guard, Kishan Bahadur, who was injured by the gang, was admitted in a hospital in Coimbatore.

The preliminary investigations revealed that watches, a crystal doll, gold and diamond jewels and three suitcases full of documents related to Jayalalithaa’s assets were decamped. The police also listed 11 suspects — Kanagaraj, Sayan, Manoj Samy, Deepu, Satheeshan, Santhosh Samy, Udayakumar, Walayar Manoj, Kutty, Jithin Joy and Jamsheer.

In the days that followed, searches carried out in Palakkad, Malappuram and Wayanad in Kerala helped the police arrest Manoj Samy, Deepu, Satheeshan, Santhosh Samy, Udayakumar and Kutty. Two others — Jithin Joy and Zamsheer — were already behind bars in connection with another case.

On April 29, two accused — Kanagaraj, the car driver at Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden, Chennai residence, and his friend Thrissur Sayan — met with separate accidents. While Kanagaraj died on the spot after his motorcycle rammed into a car at Attur in Salem district, Sayan escaped an accident near Palakkad. However, he lost his wife and a child in the accident.

On May 1, Walayar Manoj, who was serving as a priest in the estate, was arrested.

Contours of investigation

Further investigations revealed how Kanagaraj, Sayan and Walayar Manoj were related to the case.  Kanagaraj had started working as a driver at Poes Garden from 2008, following the recommendation of a party functionary. It came to light that Sayan was an assistant to the estates furnishing contractor Sajeevan, who was close to Sasikala and thereby became a sought-after carpenter by Jayalalithaa. Since Walayar Manoj also hailed from Thrissur, Sayan could have taken his help.

The police claimed that the break-in couldn’t have been attempted without the help of estate insiders. There was a power cut on that particular day and the CCTV cameras didn’t work. Kanagaraj, Sayan and Walayar Manoj were the men behind the plot, the police surmised. When they probed estate manager Natarajan, it came to be known that similar break-ins were attempted earlier, too.

On July 6, 2017, when then DMK MLA J Anbalagan raised the issue in the Assembly, EPS said that no valuables were stolen and seven special investigation teams (SIT) were formed to probe the break-in. On July 30, 2017, a computer operator named Dinesh Kumar, who was working in the estate for six years, died by suicide for unknown reasons.

The locals believed the ghost of Jayalalithaa was taking revenge. With that, the case went into silent mode for a while.

Entry of Mathew Samuel

It was in this backdrop that former Tehelka journalist Mathew Samuel produced a 16-minute documentary on the Kodanad murders. He interviewed Sayan and Walayar Manoj, both of whom alleged that EPS had played a role in the burglary and subsequent murders. While the DMK demanded his resignation, EPS claimed ₹1.1 in damages from Samuel.

Meanwhile, Sayan has appeared before Nilgiris District Superintendent of Police Ashish Rawat and claimed to have furnished some secret information relating to the case during more than three hours of investigation.

Aspire Swaminathan, the former IT wing head of AIADMK, tweeted that two of the accused were going to turn approvers. “New Twists in Kodanad case – 3 New witnesses, 2 have accepted to turn approvers, 17 new documents have now surfaced…. maybe the final nail in the coffin?,” he tweeted. Swaminathan recently quit the party.

The Kodanad mystery hangs in balance now. From the available indications, when it’s finally resolved, it’ll have repercussions not just for the Kotagiri tea estates but on entire Tamil Nadu.