Chennai, May 26: Chennai's most famous palace intrigue has got murkier. But trust "dead rats" to lend a flavour to the fracas.

Police have been brought into the picture but not because of the departed rodents.

The row, after all, concerns Chettinad House, a south Chennai mansion said to be worth at least Rs 1,200 crore in the market.

M.A.M. Ramaswamy, the patriarch of the Chettinad family, has accused his adopted son, M.A.M.R. Muthiah, of trying to usurp this palatial edifice and rob him of his last "remaining" property, located on a ten-acre plot along the Adyar river.

The 84-year-old, informally called the Raja of Chettinad, alleged that Muthiah sent 30 armed thugs on Saturday night to storm the palace and that his Man Friday, Lakshmanan, suffered a head injury in the attack.

"Muthiah has taken away 90 per cent of my property and he wants to rob me of my remaining 10 per cent as well. In fact, I had to sell our bungalow at Hyderabad for Rs 10 crore so that I could pay salaries to my personal staff who have remained loyal to me. He tried to block me from selling my 85-acre coffee estate in Kodagu (Karnataka) but I managed to get clearance from the courts. I will sell it when I get a good price," Ramaswamy says.

Muthiah's lawyers said the men had only tried to access files from a room that had been used as an office till recently. "We got news that the room door was being broken and wanted to ensure our papers were intact so we could retrieve them," said Kannan, one of the lawyers.

This is where the rats came into the frame, deepening the stink of suspicion.

Ramaswamy said the door was broken open after stench from dead rats and that the room had remained empty for months.

Both sides have filed police complaints against the other.

Ramaswamy fears that Muthiah wants to take control of Chettinad House, demolish the heritage structure and start a housing project there.

Muthiah's side has clarified that Ramaswamy and his sister, Meena Muthiah, have all the rights to enjoy the ownership of the bungalow during their lifetime.

Meena Muthiah runs Chettinad Vidyashram - one of the better-known schools in the Tamil Nadu capital - from the campus surrounding the bungalow. It was on these grounds that the wedding of Jayalalithaa's adopted son Sudhakaran was held in 1995.

While Sudhakaran has since been disowned by the Tamil Nadu chief minister, Muthiah's relationship with his adoptive father has plummeted since the titular "Raja" and his wife, Sigapi Aachi, adopted him in 1995 as they did not have any biological children.

Muthiah now lives with his wife, Geetha, in another bungalow in south Chennai and visits Chettinad House only during festivals and Ramaswamy's birthday.

In an interview, however, Muthiah had clarified that he tried to patch up with his father many times but was not being allowed to. "He is surrounded by wrong people who want to protect their vested interests, so he is unable to take an independent decision," he said.

Muthiah, a shrewd businessman, has given a corporate identity to the various companies under the Chettinad Group after becoming the MD of the group's flagship company, Chettinad Cement, in 1999.

"Under Muthiah's leadership, the group has grown from an annual turnover of Rs 600 crore to Rs 4,000 crore," said a senior manager of Chettinad Cement.

The group's interests include manufacturing cement and silica, constructions, transport, power, coal terminal services, healthcare, plantations and textile.

The family also used to head the country's first private university - Annamalai University, founded by Ramaswamy's grandfather Annamalai Chettiar - before it was taken over by the Tamil Nadu government last year following allegations of large-scale mismanagement and corruption.

In August 2014, Ramaswamy was removed as director in any of the group's companies. He tried to scuttle an AGM resolution to this effect, by allegedly bribing the then registrar of companies, only to see the attempt backfire as the CBI arrested the officer and named Ramaswamy as the second accused. The case is being investigated.

Ramaswamy, who has two famous cousins - former Union minister P. Chidambaram and former BCCI president A.C. Muthiah - is also an accused in the CBI case against Jayalalithaa.

He is accused of facilitating the payment of $3 lakh to the AIADMK leader in 1992 as a birthday gift from abroad.