An audio clip of Jayalalithaa's last days of treatment was released by probe commission (File)
Highlights
- Jayalalithaa can be heard saying that her blood pressure was normal
- Audio clip has a doctor telling her that her blood pressure was "high"
- She also says her wheezing sounds like whistles by fans in cinema halls
Months after hospital authorities said that CCTV cameras were switched off during Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's treatment, a recording of her voice was made available to the media by the commission probing her death. In the recording, the 69-year-old politician who died at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai in December 2016 after 75 days of treatment, can be heard telling a doctor that her blood pressure was normal for her.
The 1.07 minute audio recording has the voice of a duty doctor telling
Jayalalithaa that her blood pressure was "high", with 140 systolic reading, to which she asks "by?", referring to the diastolic value.
To this, the doctor says "140 by 80," and she replies saying "its okay for me... normal."
At the beginning of the clip, which has beep sounds of the monitors, she coughs and says she can hear a sound, (to denote her breathing difficulty) and that it was similar to whistles made by fans in cinema houses.
She also tells a man, identified as Dr KS Sivakumar, her physician, that if it was not possible (to download a mobile application to record her wheezing) "leave it".
In another 33-second audio clip, which is connected to the original recording, Dr Sivakumar tells Jayalalithaa, who is breathing heavily, that he is recording the wheezing and it was not "very intense now".
She then tells him "when it (wheezing) was there, I told you, you said it (application) could not be taken (downloaded)."
The doctor says in between that he has downloaded the application that could records the wheezing.
Her last voice recordings were made available by the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission of Inquiry on Saturday, probing the circumstances leading to Jayalalithaa's hospitalisation and the subsequent death in 2016.
Explaining the recordings, counsel for Jayalalithaa's aide VK Sasikala, N Raja Senthoor Pandian, said that on January 8, 2018, Dr Sivakumar had told the Commission in his deposition that he had recorded Jayalalithaa's voice on the night of September 27, 2016 at Apollo Hospital.
The voice recording was made by Dr Sivakumar, when the former chief minister had "wheezing (breathing difficulty) problem."
This was done, according to Dr Sivakumar's deposition, to send the recording of Jayalalithaa's voice to a specialist doctor for further evaluation.
"Today, when Dr Sivakumar (questioned by the panel as its witness) appeared before the Commission for deposition, he submitted madam's voice recording during cross examination by me and it was marked as an exhibit," Mr Pandian had told PTI yesterday.
After her admission to Apollo Hospital on September 22 2016, she had a wheezing problem on September 27, he said, quoting Dr Sivakumar's deposition.
According to the deposition on Saturday, after a tracheostomy procedure in October 2016, Jayalalithaa also identified pictures of some deities and spoke a few words with difficulty.
Dr Sivakumar also submitted a to-do list dated August 2, 2016 that covers diet-cum-health monitoring tasks like measuring fasting blood sugar (marked as FBS in the note) and tablets for diabetes, including 'Januvia-50 mg.'
Handwritten by Jayalalithaa in green ink, the chart showed she was conscious of her health and food, according to the deposition.
The chart, that also records her weight (106.9 kg) begins with "lotus water" at 4.55 AM and breakfast of one idli, four slices of bread, tender coconut water of 230 ml and 400 ml of coffee between 5.05 AM and 5.35 AM.
For lunch (2 pm to 2.35 pm), she had written basmati rice 1 1/2 cups, one cup yoghurt and musk melon 1/2 bowl.
Her dinner (6.30 pm to 7.15 pm) comprised walnut and dry fruits (1/2 cup), idli or upma one cup, one dosai, two slices
of bread, milk 200 ml and anti diabetic tablets.
Coffee (200 ml) in the evening (5.45 pm) and green tea (200 ml) in the mornings were part of her schedule (5.45 am).
Hitting out at the timing of the release of such information, Leader of the opposition in the assembly and DMK Working President MK Stalin alleged that that the Commission is being used to divert people's attention from the Tuticorin police firing as people were angry at the government over it.
In September 2017, the Tamil Nadu government constituted the Arumugasamy panel under the Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952.
The panel's terms of reference was to inquire into the circumstances and situation leading to the hospitalisation of Jayalalithaa (on September 22, 2016), and treatment provided till her demise on December 5, 2016.
The Commission had invited all those having "personal knowledge and direct acquaintance" in the matter to furnish information to it till Saturday.
Following Jayalalithaa's death, suspicion about the circumstances leading to her death were raised by several people, including the present Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and his followers.