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Wedding of Jayalalithaa's foster son Sudhakaran

· Chennai

More than 150,000 people watched the extravagant Madras wedding of V. N. Sudhakaran, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's foster son, an event later drawn into corruption cases.

V. N. Sudhakaran, nephew of V. K. Sasikala, an aide of Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, was taken by her as a foster son in 1995. He married a granddaughter of the actor Sivaji Ganesan in Madras on 7 September 1995; over 150,000 people followed the ceremony on big screens, and the guest count earned it a place in the Guinness World Records. Its sheer size attracted broad criticism and fed the mood against the government ahead of the 1996 election. The wedding's cost was later included in the disproportionate assets case against Jayalalithaa, who disowned Sudhakaran in 1996.

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