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All India anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalithaa on Monday issued legal notices to three media organisations, including DMK-owned Kalaignar TV, for carrying "frivolous and defamatory" reports linking her to tainted Pune-based businessman Hassan Ali Khan, and demanded unconditional apology from them.
The notices have been issued to Mumbai-based eveninger Mid-Day, Chennai-based DMK's official mouthpiece Murasoli and Kalaignar TV.
Jayalalithaa said she will take legal action if the three media organisations failed to respond to her notice.
Jayalalithaa's counsel P H Manoj Pandian said in the notice that the "preposterous claim made without any verification is not backed by any documentation."
"My client states that the report by Mid-Day quotes an anonymous investigating officer as saying that investigations into huge cache of money in the possession of Hasan Ali Khan, who is in the center of a controversy for reportedly evading Income Tax to the tune of several thousand crores, pointed to 'a woman politician, who was also Chief Minister of a state from South India'.
"This is mischievous, scurrilous, malicious and insinuating journalism at its very worst," he said.
Pandian said Jayalalithaa categorically makes known that she has nothing whatsoever to do with Hasan Ali and said it was she who had issued statements and pressed for action against persons who have stashed black money in foreign banks.
Khan is accused of stashing black money abroad. He said the Mid-Day report became the source for Murasoli and Kalaignar TV, which identified the 'woman Chief Minister' as Jayalalithaa in a highly 'defamatory, slanderous report' in the Tamil daily, which was also broadcast in Kalaignar TV.
The report was conceived through "sheer imagination" and published without any verification and with ulterior motive, he said in the notice.
"My client states that the above referred news item does not contain an iota of truth. The news item is false, frivolous and defamatory with the intention of maligning my client in order to cause loss of reputation to her and the party she leads," he said.
Saying that Jayalalithaa had suffered loss due to the report that cannot be quantified, Pandian said the dailies should tender unconditional apology and publish it in the first page, while Kalaignar TV has to broadcast the same.
"It has to be done immediately on receipt of this notice by all of you, failing which my client would be constrained to institute necessary and appropriate civil and criminal action against you, jointly and severally to restrain you from indulging in such reckless, frivolous and irresponsible allegations and publishing the same, apart from claiming damages for the loss of reputation," he said.