Plot to kill Devananda, Perumal: Eight Tigers arrested in India

A senior Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) operative referred to as the ‘Tamil Nadu intelligence chief’ was arrested from the outskirts of Chennai yesterday, police said. Seven other Tiger suspects were also arrested.

Police told media persons here that they have nabbed Thambidurai Parameswaran, also known as Suruli, whom they referred to as the “Tamil Nadu intelligence chief” of the terrorist outfit.

Parameswaran, who was among eight men arrested on Wednesday night, was working under Sanjeev Master, an LTTE intelligence wing leader, police officials added. They have been plotting to kill Minister Douglas Devananda and EPRLF’s Vartharaja Perumal in India. The LTTE assassinated the EPRLF’s Pathmanaba in Chennai in 1990.

It has been revealed that Parameswaran has also recruited a man from Chennai and planted him in the office of Minister Devananda in Colombo.

All the men were engaged in trading between Sri Lanka and India and travelled frequently to the Rameswaram and Puducherry coasts on “information gathering” missions.

Iron ball rings and plastics used in making explosives were seized from them, police said. The group was procuring supplies for the LTTE gathering information on the movements of Perumal and Devananda, a police statement said. Parameswaran arrived in Rameswaram clandestinely in February 2007 and lived undercover as a taxi driver.

He had engaged seven Sri Lankan Tamils, who attempted to procure bomb components and boats from Puducherry and Rameswaram to be smuggled to Sri Lanka.

Acting on information, police arrested Parameswaran at Madipakkam in the suburbs of the city on Thursday night and during interrogation details of the seven others in the city were revealed by him. They were also later taken into custody, the statement said.

The eight were produced before a Magistrate who remanded them to judicial custody.