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The Tamil Nadu government has ordered a year's extension for the three special courts set up by the earlier Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government headed by M Karunanidhi to hear corruption cases against All India Anna DMK leader J Jayalalitha and her erstwhile ministerial and bureaucratic aides.
The term of the special courts was to expire on June 30. The extension order puts at rest speculation about their future.
The state government, now headed by Jayalalitha, may now even arraign some of the DMK's leaders before these very courts, on corruption charges.
It was one such special court that had convicted Jayalalitha of corruption in the TANSI land deal case and sentenced her to three years rigorous imprisonment, as a result of which she was disqualified from contesting the May assembly election.
The courts also found her guilty in the Kodaikanal hotel case, but acquitted her in the colour TV purchase case.
At present, the disproportionate assets case and the coal import case against Jayalalitha are pending in courts.
The hearing in the assets case, based mostly on documentary evidence, was adjourned after the change in government in May. The main prosecution witness, former IAS officer V Sundaram, has also turned hostile, though he hasn't yet been proclaimed as such by the prosecution.
Sundaram changed his evidence just as he had changed his political tag after obtaining voluntary retirement before Jayalalitha's government was voted out of power in 1996. He has made himself unavailable for cross-examination over the past year and a half. He was said to have been out of the country on a private visit most of the time.
Opinion was divided within the ruling establishment about the purposefulness of the special courts after the AIADMK's return to power, as also on the legality of winding them up.
But even those advocating winding up of the special courts agreed that pending cases would have to be transferred to regular courts.
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