Law JusticeDMK-AIADMK alternation
Pleasant Stay verdict and the Dharmapuri bus burning
Jayalalithaa was sentenced to a year's imprisonment in the Pleasant Stay hotel case; in the violence that followed, three agricultural students were burnt to death in a bus at Dharmapuri.
On 2 February 2000 a special court convicted former Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa and others in the Pleasant Stay hotel case, relating to permission for a hotel in Kodaikanal, and sentenced her to one year of rigorous imprisonment. Her supporters protested across the state, and buses were torched and damaged. Near Dharmapuri, a bus carrying students of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, returning from a study tour was set on fire, and three women students were burnt to death. Three AIADMK workers were sentenced to death for the killings in 2007, later commuted to life imprisonment. The Madras High Court suspended her sentence on 9 February 2000 and acquitted her on 4 December 2001.
