Keeping the heat on the principal opposition AIADMK and its general secretary E Palaniswami, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin on Wednesday asserted that justice will be ensured in the sensational heist at the palatial mansion of late Jayalalithaa at Kodanad within a few months of her demise in April 2017.

Stalin, claiming credit for Monday’s landmark verdict which sentenced to life all the nine convicts in the Pollachi gang-rape and extortion scandal, told newspersons in Ooty that his government would ensure that the guilty in the high profile Kodanad case too were brought to book.

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Incidentally, the Pollachi sex scandal took place during the previous AIADMK regime of EPS.

“My promise to the people of Tamil Nadu was that the guilty in the Pollachi sex scandal would get the harshest punishment as per law, had been fulfilled. Likewise, the accused in the Kodanad case too would be brought to justice at the earliest,” he said in response to a question.

He is in the Nilgiris on a five-day visit. After the Pollachi case, Stalin has turned the focus on the daring robbery and murder of one person that took place at the Kodanad estate mansion of Jayalalithaa, months after EPS took over the reins as chief minister. Initially there was an attempt at a cover up and the probe is continuing to drag on for years. Bringing the culprits to justice was a poll pledge of the DMK in the 2021 assembly election.

Months after Jayalalithaa’s death, an armed gang barged into the Kodanad estate bungalow, brutally murdering a security guard and looted valuables and sensitive documents. However, it remains a mystery as to what had been looted. Initially, the police recovered a few items like wrist watches and decorative pieces from the accused. However, following court intervention, the case was entrusted to a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the CB-CID police.

Mystery shrouds the heist as well as the subsequent death of the prime accused, Kanagaraj, a former driver of Jayalalithaa at her Poes Garden residence, who had enlisted 10 others from Kerala to carry out the dacoity. On the day when Kanagaraj, hailing from Edappadi, the native town of EPS, met with a fatal accident near Salem, Sayan, another accused escaped in an accident near Palakkad while wife and daughter were killed in that. Later, the Computer Operator Dinesh Kumar was found dead at his residence in Kotagiri.

The AIADMK had been accusing the DMK government of attempting to malign EPS by linking him with the dacoity. With many twists and turns, trial in the case is progressing at a snail’s pace.