Truce off in Lanka, LTTE cadres feel the heat in India

On January 6, the police in Mangalore district of Karnataka claimed to have arrested two Sri Lankan Tamils, Bala Reuben, 22, from Vavuniya and Nalla Tambi Jayasheelan, 25, from Jaffna, allegedly over a fake credit cards racket. The arrests were made after a tip-off by intelligence authorities on men using fake credit cards to purchase jewels in Mangalore. The two arrested men have told the police they were working for ‘Chennai’ Kumar, who is believed to be connected to the LTTE, and were only tasked with buying jewels in India with the fake cards. They claimed to have received very small commissions and said they did not know what Kumar did with the jewels. The police, however, suspect an LTTE fundraising racket.

Gold worth Rs 3 lakh, 11 fake credit cards created with possibly stolen identities of non-resident Indians and one fake passport created in Chennai were seized following the arrests, police said.

The gold purchases have been traced to Bangalore and Mangalore.

Incidentally, the two have also told interrogators that Kumar may be known to the Bangalore police as Srigandhapal, a resident of Tiruchi, who was arrested in the city in June 2007 with two others in a similar fake credit cards case. He subsequently jumped bail and disappeared.

During the June 2007 arrests made by the Chandra Layout police in Bangalore, 120 fake credit cards of 35 banks had been seized from Srigandhapal, an engineer, Sai Prasad from Chennai and a film financier, Nagaraj. What was more interesting was that the three claimed to have got data for the fake cards from the US.

“We are still investigating if that was just a criminal act carried out by a few individuals or part of larger LTTE fundraising. A few key persons are missing in the case and no direct links to the LTTE have emerged apart from the statements of some of the arrested,” said a senior police official in Bangalore.

The January 6 arrests in Karnataka were followed by arrests of seven alleged LTTE activists from Madurai by the Q branch of the Tamil Nadu Police on January 8.

Nearly 5,000 detonators set to be smuggled to Sri Lanka, and Rs 1.5 lakh given to a Sri Lankan refugee for alleged purchase of explosives, were seized, reports said.

On January 16, three Sri Lankans, suspected to be linked to the LTTE, and a man from Chennai were arrested with fake passports from a hotel in the Paharganj area in Delhi. They were identified as Francis Jansan, 29, T S Ranjit, 28, and John Mary Agastan, 22.

Most recently, on January 17, the Chennai police reported the arrest of an LTTE intelligence wing member, Thambidurai Parameshwaran, and seven Sri Lankan Tamils allegedly involved in plotting an attack on a rival Sri Lankan Tamil outfit leader and a Sri Lankan minister.