LTTE’s downfall began with Rajiv killing- V. Muralidharan

Walter Jayawardhana

Karuna Amman alias Vinayagamoorthy Muralidharan, former bodyguard of Velupillai Prabhakaran and presently National Integration and Reconciliation Minister told BBC-Radio 4 that the dead terrorist leaders’ downfall began with the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Muralidharan said “That was a big mistake because following that, 20 countries banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization. Before that, many Governments had been supporting them behind the scene.”

However, he did not mention about the countries supported the terrorist group.

Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated through a plot by Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman and it was done at Siriperumbudur, a suburb of Chennai. The former ideologue of the LTTE, late Anton Balasingham called it a monumental historical tragedy, regretted it but immediately after that the LTTE officially backtracked on it.

In Today program, Muralidharan said Prabhakaran’s first serious strategic mistake came in May 1991, with the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. He said he had no fore knowledge of the operation but immediately suspected Prabhakaran and his Intelligence Chief Pottu Amman because the assassination had been carried out by a suicide bomber, an LTTE hallmark.

“I told Prabhakaran that he had made a big mistake,” said Muralidharan. “He denied it but I knew. Following the incident, 20 countries banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization,” he added.

Prabhakaran killed Gandhi to punish India for its military intervention in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s, but in the long term, the killing would severely affected the LTTE’s course.

Prabhakaran never came forward to fight the foes during a battle. That corroborates with what happened during the final hours of Prabhakaran’s life. Without fighting or consuming cyanide as he had ordered others to do, he tried to flee in an armour plated vehicle with ambulance markings. Later he was killed when the vehicle was destroyed by rocket fire, Muralidharan said.

“In my 22 years with the LTTE, Prabhakaran never came to the battlefield. He always stayed behind the lines. Everyone knows Prabhakaran as this iron man and a born leader. But he was never like that,” he said. Prabhakaran would have never surrendered to the Army because he knew his crimes, Muralidharan added.