VK Sasikala will walk out of a Bengaluru prison today, nearly eight months after she was jailed for corruption. She has been given five days to travel to Chennai to visit her husband in hospital.
Sasikala's nephew TTV Dhinakaran arrived this morning at the Bengaluru Central Prison with a group of supporters.
Sasikala, recently evicted as chief of Tamil Nadu's ruling AIADMK, was denied parole when she requested it earlier this week. She has been granted parole with conditions; she cannot meet with anyone in Chennai and has to live at the home of her relative. She also can't be involved in any political activity and give statements to the media.
Sasikala was the closest aide of former Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and lived with her at her upscale Poes Garden home in Chennai. She installed herself as AIADMK chief after Jayalalithaa's death in December and was about to try and take over as Chief Minister in February when the Supreme Court sentenced her to four years in jail for corruption.
The Poes Garden home, Veda Nilayam, will be turned into a memorial for Jayalalithaa, and so is out of bounds for Sasikala, who had noted it down as her address in jail records.
Earlier, the Bengaluru prison authorities had rejected Sasikala's 15-day parole request on "Technical grounds" as her "paperwork was not complete".
Sasikala's husband, M Natarajan, 74, had a liver and kidney transplant on Wednesday. He was admitted to hospital last month after a multiple organ failure.