It now turns out that Justice Arumuga Swamy, who heads the one-man Commission of Inquiry (COI) probing the mysterious circumstances which marked the untimely demise of former Tamil Nadu chief-minister J. Jayalalithaa in December, 2016, may visit the Parappana Agrahara Prison complex in Bangalore to take the statement of Sasikala, a prison inmate and a former aide of the former chief-minister for more than 3 decades.

Sources in Chennai said Justice Swamy’s visit appears imminent in the face of increasing reluctance on the part of Sasikala, widely believed by many to have ‘hatched a conspiracy to finish off Jayalalithaa’, to come out of her prison cell and depose before the Commission in response to summons issued to her earlier.

Sasikala’s counsel once again renewed her request to the Commission to provide details about who made the complaint against her in the case so that she could respond to summons. “We have referred to a 2015 judgment by a Uttarakhand Court about the rights of persons receiving summons to know the origin of those summons. We have told COI that with this information, we would respond to summons within the next 15 days,” he told newsmen.

He also said that the COI had no right to pass any verdict but can only inquire into the case and submit a report to the State Government.