AIADMK general secretary and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Sunday expelled former Director-General of Police R. Natraj from the party. She asked party cadres not to have any truck with him as he had “worked against the interests of the party and brought disrepute” to it.

Mr. Natraj, who never hid his admiration for Jayalalithaa when he was Chennai Police Commissioner and hailed her as the “ideal woman”, prompting the Election Commission to transfer him, had joined the party last year after demitting office as the Tamil Nadu Public Services Commission chairman. While Ms. Jayalalithaa did not spell out any specific reason for expelling him, Mr. Natraj vehemently denied making any comments against the party or the administration at any point in time. However, it was widely speculated that he drew her ire after Thanthi TV, a Tamil news channel, wrongly attributed to him a comment critical of the government’s functioning made by R. Natarajan, a former journalist and advisor to the US consulate here.

“We had called R. Natarajan over phone on Saturday to get his reaction on the government’s handling of the recent floods in Chennai and used former DGP Natraj’s photograph during the telecast of the interview. We had saved both their numbers under one name and hence the confusion. On realising the faux pas, we apologised to the former DGP and clarified the same to our viewers on Sunday morning. We also removed the content from our website,” a spokesperson of the Thanthi TV channel told The Hindu.

On his part, Mr. Natraj said, “The channel by mistake used my name and designation. I had lodged my strong protest with the Editor of the channel and later the content was removed.”