1980s: When Lankan militants roamed TN
June 11, 2010 09:50 am
CHENNAI: Douglas Devananda is not the first Sri Lankan Tamil
militant leader to meet an Indian head of government while facing criminal
proceedings in
In the run-up to the signing of the Indo-Sri Lankan
Agreement on July 29, 1987, Gandhi had Prabhakaran flown in from
There was nothing surprising about the manner in which cases
involving Tamil militants were instituted and then forgotten, as the 1980s was
a period of permissiveness towards the presence of armed militants and their
occasional crimes. Armed and trained by India, leaders and members of various
militant groups treated India, particularly Tamil Nadu, as their safe haven, to
which they could retreat whenever they were injured or needed breathing time.
There were quite a few training camps in the state, functioning under the
patronage of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), which virtually ran
While there was overall sympathy for Tamil militant groups in Tamil Nadu, they were also close to political leaders. Then chief minister M.G. Ramachandran had special affinity towards Prabhakaran, while DMK president M. Karunanidhi, then the opposition leader, was known to be close to the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation (TELO) headed by late Sri Sabaratnam. The state became a hunting ground for the LTTE, which eliminated the EPRLF leadership in Chennai on June 19, 1990, when it mowed down the group’s leader K. Padmanabha and 13 others.
Fraternal fighting among these groups often spilled over to Tamil Nadu. There was only one occasion that the state police sought to rein in Tamil militants. This was in October 1986 when then state police chief, late K. Mohandas, cracked down on all groups and seized their weapons and communication sets. A distraught Prabhakaran, who felt that the confiscation of wireless set had crippled the organization, went on an indefinite fast. Pro-LTTE leaders put great pressure on the MGR regime to return the weapons and communication equipment. The government ultimately caved in, and the LTTE got a bonanza as a result. They got back not only their own arms and ammunition, but the weapons that were previously held by other groups also.
It was not until the EPRLF massacre and Rajiv Gandhi’s
assassination 11 months later that the state’s leaders realized the
consequences of infusing gun culture in Tamil Nadu. – (The Times of
Picture: Uma Maheswaran