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India News: LTTE man shot by Karuna fled India after Gandhi killing

14-April-2004

New Delhi, India : A Tamil Tiger intelligence operative shot dead by renegade commander Karuna in Sri Lanka had escaped from India three months after the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Neelan, as the long-standing member of the intelligence wing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was known, was one of the earliest to set up a base in India when the LTTE decided to kill Gandhi.

Neelan, whom Indian investigators referred to as Kanthan, crossed over to Tamil Nadu clandestinely from Sri Lanka's north some time in 1990 on the order of Pottu Amman, the LTTE intelligence chief.

His arrival was not known then to Indian intelligence and security agencies, which were, however, keeping a close watch on the LTTE's political section members all over Tamil Nadu.

Accompanying Neelan to India was a trusted wireless operator who went by the nom de guerre Ramanan. The call sign of Neelan's transmitter was 95.

It was Ramanan who sent Neelan's messages to Pottu Amman, who had planned the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, and received instructions from the latter. Pottu Amman's call sign on the wireless was 910.

But Indian officials believe that although Neelan was asked to set up a secret base in Tamil Nadu, he was probably not aware that the Tigers had decided to do away with Rajiv Gandhi, who was then on a comeback trail in Indian politics.

Nevertheless, Neelan carried out faithfully whatever he was instructed to by Pottu Amman, whose main LTTE intelligence operative in Tamil Nadu was Sivarasan, who was widely known as the "one-eyed-jack".

Initially, Sivarasan used Neelan's wireless to communicate with Pottu Amman.


Neelan also met Nalini, an Indian girl who played a key role in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and who witnessed the Congress leader blow up at an election rally near Madras on May 21, 1991.

Once the deed was done, LTTE operatives were on the run in Tamil Nadu. They included Neelan, who kept changing his hideouts.

Sivarasan killed himself in Bangalore in August 1991 after being cornered by security forces.

At one stage, Neelan became upset, telling a confidant that Pottu Amman appeared to be more concerned about trying to save Sivarasan and not him (Neelan).

As the LTTE operatives became desperate in Tamil Nadu, Pottu Amman went against his original plans and asked his intelligence unit members to take help from the political section of the group -- who were under watch from Indian authorities but knew Tamil Nadu better than the intelligence operatives -- and try to escape.

But the Indian investigators came to know of this. In July 1991 -- two months after Gandhi's killing -- they published the photographs of Neelan and of Dixon, a member of the LTTE political section, and stepped up their hunt for the two.

However, Neelan continued to evade the Indian authorities and escaped to Jaffna in August 1991.

Neelan remained an active member of the Pottu Amman-led LTTE intelligence section in Sri Lanka's north and east and was linked to several assassinations, mainly of Tamils opposed to the LTTE.

Last month, he fell into the net of V. Muraleedharan alias Karuna, the former regional commander of LTTE who broke away on March 3 and took control of the two districts of Batticaloa and Amparai.

One published report in Colombo had suggested that Karuna could use Neelan as a bargaining chip, probably with India.

But Karuna did not do that. Instead, just before fleeing his base in eastern Sri Lanka, Karuna shot Neelan dead.

Indo-Asian News Service