Chennai, Sep 20: The Apollo Hospitals has told the Justice A Arumughaswamy Commission that it doesn't have any CCTV footage of former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's hospitalisation. The hospital said the CCTV footages of Jayalalithaa's stay were deleted as its servers store data for only a month and deleted old data to accommodate new.

“We have said we are unable to produce the footage asked for, in some specific areas, because it is stored in a server and it is overwritten every 30 days. Since, it is well over a year; we do not have the footage with us," legal counsel for Apollo Hospitals Maimoona Badsha told The Economic Times on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, the inquiry commission sought submission of footages of CCTV cameras installed inside Apollo Hospitals following the arrival of Jayalalithaa. Interestingly, Prathap C Reddy, Founder-Chairman of Apollo Hospitals, in March said that all CCTV cameras were off during Jayalalithaa's hospitalisation at the hospital.

“Unfortunately, they (CCTVs) were switched off. Jayalalithaa got admitted, and one ICU was completely occupied only by her. So, they removed the footage because they did not want everyone to be watching”, Reddy was quoted by ANI. Following the Apollo Hospitals' response, the commission is exploring possibilities of retrieving data even after the footages were deleted.

Jayalalithaa was admitted at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai in September 2016 and breathed her last on December 5, 2016. She suffered a cardiac arrest on December 4 and was declared dead the following day. Following Jayalalithaa's death, allegations of foul play began to do the rounds. Subsequently, a commission was formed by the state government to investigate the matter.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 20, 2018 12:04 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).