The Supreme Court called Poes Garden the hub of the conspiracy to amass assets worth Rs 60 crore illegally, in its verdict that convicted V.K. Sasikala, AIADMK general secretary, of playing an active part in the same. Veda Nilayam, in Poes Garden, was the official residence of former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa.
After the AIADMK leader's death, Sasikala, her aide, continued to reside in the bungalow with her relatives until her imprisonment on Wednesday. Acting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam had recently proposed to convert the house into a memorial for Jayalalithaa.
Poes Garden is a posh neighbourhood in the busy Teynampet locality of Chennai. Apart from top industrialists, lawyers and celebrities, another well-known face in the neighbourhood is Tamil superstar Rajnikanth. A high-security area, Poes Garden is in the heart of the city.
It is commonly misbelieved that the area is named after American poet Edgar Allan Poe. But, the locality has nothing to do with the timeless wordsmith.
The entire locality once belonged to an 19th century obscure Englishman, referred to as "Mr Poe" in an 1837 map of his property. Such was the extent of the land that it was informally called Poe's gardens, back then.
Later, much of the property was bought by the centuries-old shipping company, Binny and Co., in 1921, and was divided among its directors.
When the company shifted its directors to Adyar in the 1950s, the area was divided into residential plots and sold. Jayalalithaa had purchased a bungalow in the vicinity for Rs 1.32 lakh in 1967, and it is currently valued over Rs 44 crore.
