DMK MP Kanimozhi DMK MP Kanimozhi

She sits quietly in a corner in the Patiala House courtroom in Delhi, with her 11-year-old son Adhithyan on her lap. Sometimes she sits holding hands with her mother, Rajathi Ammal. Very often she is seen reading a well-thumbed Gabriel Garca Marquez. She has apologised to only one person since her arrest on May 20: her son. In court, while other 2G accused send text messages to their lawyers, talk, ask questions, she sits aloof, as if she is elsewhere. If Kanimozhi is fighting anything, it is her emotions. Others are at war on the many fronts that have opened up in her life: legal, political, personal.

The 2G trial begins on November 11, but the political battle for the leadership of the clannish DMK is the silent scenario against which the legal drama is being played out. Her lawyers are moving the Delhi High Court to seek bail again after four rejections in six months.

Kanimozhi means 'loveable' in Tamil. A loving name for a daughter whose birth changed her father's destiny. "Quite a woman," say young lawyers on Delhi's court circuit, quite taken by the bindi-dotted, nosepinned "South Indian charm" of the 2G accused DMK MP. Others find her "dignified". "There's no attentionseeking behaviour to pull you in," says Rebecca John, counsel for 2G accused Sanjay Chandra, Unitech managing director. She is very much on her own, says a young lawyer who visits Tihar Jail often. She is lodged in the women's jail, Number 6. All the men are together in jails 3 or 4. "They keep each other company. But she is isolated from the bustle," he says. "She also comes and goes to the court in a different bus." The 2G accused men think that she has taken it very badly.

This is an excerpt from India Today Cover Story dated November 21, 2011. To read more, subscribe to the magazine.