Is LTTE getting arms from Tamil Nadu?

Arun Ram

CHENNAI: As the conflict in Sri Lanka intensifies, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) may be getting a little help from across the Palk Straits, especially from Tamil Nadu, intelligence agencies believe.

While the Sri Lankan authorities have been more than hinting at such a probability, a few recent finds of rockets and gelex boosters with admissible stamps of the LTTE on the Indian side have prompted the Indian agencies to take a closer look at Tamil Nadu's porous coastline.

Some of the uncleared areas in Sri Lanka are just 20 kms from Rameswaram of Tamil Nadu and the LTTE is known to have friends among some groups in Tamil Nadu and naxals in Andhra Pradesh.

On December 5 and 10, Tamil fishermen netted three live rockets near the Indo-Lankan border. The two-and-half feet rockets with a 10 km range were packed in wooden cases with cartridges and propellants. U C Barman, officer-in-charge of naval detachment, Rameswaram, did not "rule out anything" when reporters asked him about the LTTE angle.

Only a week ago, Tamil Nadu police made an accidental seizure of 30 boxes of gelex boosters (used for increasing the velocity of bomb particles) after a vehicle carrying them from Andhra Pradesh met with an accident near Madurai.

"Our hunch is that the consignment was meant for the LTTE," Tamil Nadu DGP D Mukherjee had said.

Sources said a lathe machine (which could be used for making bomb shells) was seized last month.

"The State's coastline is so vast (1,076 km) that patrolling the whole area is impossible. That thousands of Lankan refugees land on the Indian shores without being intercepted speaks for the porous nature of the coastline," says a Coast Guard official.