Jayalalithaa's voice recording, handwritten menu give insight on her last days

Chennai: A recording of late chief minister Jayalalithaa's voice, telling a doctor that her blood pressure of 140/80 was normal for her, has been made available to the media by the commission probing her death.

When a duty doctor tells Jayalalithaa her blood pressure was "high, it reads 140 (systolic)," she asks "by", meaning what was the diastolic value.

To this, the doctor replies "140/80," and she replies "its okay for me... normal."

At the beginning of the 1:07 minute audio, which has beep sounds of the monitors, she coughs and says she can hear a sound, (to denote her breathing difficulty) and it was similar to whistles made by fans in cinema houses.

She also tells a man, identified as Dr K S 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, which is connected to the other recording, Dr Sivakumar tells Jayalalithaa, who is breathing heavily, that he is recording the wheezing and it was not "very intense now."

Coughing, she 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 (app/to record her wheezing).

Her last voice recordings were made available by the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission of Inquiry on Saturday, probing the circumstances leading to the hospitalisation and the subsequent death of the late leader in 2016.

Giving a background to the recordings, counsel for Jayalalithaa's aide V K 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 done by Sivakumar, when the late leader had "wheezing (breathing difficulty) problem."

This was done, according to Sivakumar's deposition, to send the late chief minister'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," Pandian told news agency PTI.

After her admission to Apollo Hospital on September 22, 2016, she had a wheezing problem on September 27, he said, quoting Sivakumar's deposition.

According to Sivakumar's deposition on Sunday, after a tracheostomy procedure in October 2016, Jayalalithaa also identified pictures of some deities and spoke a few words with difficulty.

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, M K Stalin, Leader of the opposition in the assembly and DMK working president, alleged 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 demise were raised by several persons, including the present Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and his followers.