Don Sridhar’s body to arrive in city on Sunday

The body will be transported to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on Saturday evening from Phnom Penh as there is no direct flight to Chennai from the capital city of Cambodia. It will be later brought to Chennai, said lawyer Purushothaman, who is camping in Phnom Penh since October 5 with Sridhar’s son Santhosh. 

It may be noted that the Madras High Court on Monday, reacting to a petition filed by Sridhar’s daughter Dhanalakshmi, had asked the Ministry of External Affairs to assist the family in bringing back the body to Tamil Nadu, where the don faced 43 cases, including a string of murders. 

As Sridhar had no official documents with him, his family and lawyer were struggling to convince the Cambodian authority that it was his body. Only after the Indian mission’s intervention did the family get clearance.

Sridhar, who managed to go to Dubai in 2013 despite cases pending against him, had been heading a land mafia sitting there for the last few years. 

In 2016, the police and the Enforcement Directorate began the legal action against him and attached as many as 129 properties worth over Rs 160 crore after a court declared him as a proclaimed offender. 

As a tactic to put pressure on Sridhar to return to Tamil Nadu, the police and ED had been summoning and questioning his wife, son and daughter besides arresting his brother. It is believed that in the beginning of 2017, Sridhar left Dubai and moved to Southeast Asia with a fake Sri Lankan passport and was staying in Cambodia, where he allegedly committed suicide by consuming either mercury or cyanide.