- Tuesday, March 04, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
In a shocking claim, Nadu Pazha Nedumaran, a veteran politician from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, on Monday (13) said Velupillai Prabhakaran, the chief of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who was declared dead by the government of Sri Lanka in 2009, is alive and healthy and will make a public appearance soon.
Prabhakaran, who founded the LTTE that carried out an extensive guerilla campaign for a separate homeland for the Tamils in the island-nation for many decades, was reportedly eliminated on May 18, 2009, during an operation conducted by the Sri Lankan Army at Mullivaikal in the northern part. The government of Sri Lanka had declared him dead.
According to a report by NDTV, Nedumaran, president of the World Tamils Confederation, told reporters in Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu, “LTTE chief Prabhakaran is alive and will appear soon. We are happy to announce this to the world. He would announce his plans for Tamil Eelam.”
Speaking on the timing of the announcement, the 89-year-old said the fall of the Rajapaksa government in Sri Lanka created a favourable situation in that country and the time was ripe for Prabhakaran to appear again.
Several pictures and videos of a body were shared after the Sri Lankan government announced the end of Prabhakaran in 2009, claiming that it belonged to the former LTTE chief. While many said that the images were doctored, others alleged that the killing of Prabhakaran had violated the international conventions as he had come to surrender under an agreement.
Prabhakaran was 54 then.
He was a prime accused in the assassination of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in May 1991. He was also charged in some other cases of assassination in Sri Lanka and LTTE was announced a banned terror outfit.
What had started as a liberation movement with few other groups opposing decades of alleged discrimination against Tamils in Sri Lanka, Prabhakaran had later switched to armed struggle, including guerrilla warfare and suicide attacks.
The LTTE also became the first terror group to have an air force.
The Sri Lankan armed forces, on the other hand, were accused of human rights violations on a massive scale.
Several thousands of Lankan Tamil civilians were allegedly killed in bombings in the final phase of Colombo’s war against the LTTE.
