Prabhakaran’s kin to publicly commemorate his death to thwart scamsters

Sick and tired of the baseless claims that the LTTE leader is alive, Velupillai Prabhakaran’s family has finally decided to publicly commemorate his death, in a bid to end financial frauds taking place in his name.

Diehard supporters of the now vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka, India and among the Tamil diaspora in the West continue to maintain that Prabhakaran was never killed in 2009.

According to this lobby, Prabhakaran and his family escaped the final brutal stages of the Sri Lankan war that left tens of thousands dead and are currently living in an unnamed country in the West.

Nedumaran's claim

In February 2023, Tamil Nadu politician P Nedumaran made a stunning claim that Prabhakaran was alive and well and would show up publicly soon. He even asserted that he was speaking on Prabhakaran’s wish.

Knowing that Nedumaran was among the few Indian politicians Prabhakaran really respected, the claim made waves globally, including in the mammoth Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.

Then, in November last year, a 12-minute purported speech by Prabhakaran’s only daughter Dwarka surfaced on social media, where she supposedly claimed the political struggle for Tamil Eelam would continue and that she would visit Sri Lanka soon.

Tamil circles were soon alive with assertions that this was a fake video and that the woman claiming to be Prabhakaran’s daughter was someone else of Tamil origin in Switzerland.

The last straw

Tamil sources say the video was the last straw for Prabhakaran’s family, which has realised that not publicly accepting that the man is dead has allowed some scamsters to make false claims about the LTTE chief being alive to raise lots of money, apparently for his and his family’s supposed medical issues.

When Prabhakaran was killed in fighting in Sri Lanka’s Mullaitivu district in 2009, the LTTE insisted that he was not dead, a claim that was readily echoed by Tamil Nadu politicians who were known to be Prabhakaran loyalists.

According to Tamil sources, the main reason why significant sections of the LTTE network in the West refused to accept his death was because this would have marked the end of their financial empire.

Myth created for funds

“So, to ensure that donations to the LTTE cause do not stop, the myth was created that not just Prabhakaran but his entire family had escaped the war,” a Sri Lankan Tamil source in Britain told The Federal.

This claim, although without evidence, also suited those sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil community who were ardent LTTE backers and could not come to terms with the fact that Prabhakaran had been killed.

Now, the family of Prabhakaran’s only elder brother, Manoharan, has made it public that they plan to conduct a public memorial for the dead insurgent, and soon.

“We will also hold a public thithi (death rites) based on lunar calendar to mark the death anniversary of Prabhakaran, his wife Mathivathani (and their children),” Manoharan’s son Karthik Manoharan has told the latest issue of Jaffna Monitor magazine.

Violent deaths

Prabhakaran’s wife was also killed in the final stages of the war along with the daughter, Dwaraka (Thuvaraga). The couple’s eldest son, Charles Antony, also died in fighting while the younger son, Balachandran, is widely known to have been captured and executed in cold blood by Sri Lankan troops.

Prabhakaran himself was killed along with dozens of LTTE fighters in a lagoon on May 19, 2009, according to the Sri Lankan military.

Karthik Manoharan told Jaffna Monitor’s March 2024 issue the family desired to bring a closure to “the baseless rumours that have been circulating suggesting that Prabhakaran’s family survived the final stages of the conflict".

“The family’s response is a direct response to these ongoing deceptions and aims to bring a closure to these unfounded narratives,” he added.

Aware of frauds

Prabhakaran’s family made it clear that they were aware of the frauds going on in the name of the LTTE founder leader. “This (planned) memorial event is a necessary measure to curtail the ongoing fraudulent exploitation and misuse of my uncle’s name for financial profit,” Manoharan said.

“Through this event, we aim to appropriately commemorate the brave lives and the valorous sacrifices of my uncle Prabhakaran and his family on the battlefield.”

Manoharan further said that those making deceptive claims about Prabhakaran to make financial gains “should consider more honest means of livelihood".

War of 2009

“It is now with a heavy heart that I have come to accept the likely reality my uncle Prabhakaran and his family achieved martyrdom … during the final war in 2009.”

He said the commemoration of Prabhakaran will be “deeply rooted in our family’s religious beliefs and practices. We intended to ensure that the memorial is respectful and sensitive, acknowledging the feelings and beliefs of others…

“Additionally, this commemoration serves a deeper, more solemn purpose. It is an occasion for us to seek peace for their departed souls.”

Manoharan admitted that his parents had been conducting private commemoration for Prabhakaran’s family every year. But in the planned event, “the involvement of the public will be considered in a manner aligning with our family’s wishes and the solemn nature of the occasion”.

About Prabhakaran

Prabhakaran was the youngest of four siblings who was born into a middleclass Tamil family in Jaffna in November 1954. His only brother and his two sisters, all married, live in different countries.

Prabhakaran, who took to militancy in the early 1970s, founded the LTTE in 1976, a year after assassinating Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duriappah. He was based in Tamil Nadu from late 1983 to January 1987 when he returned to Jaffna.

He ordered the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.

But from being once in control of a third of Sri Lanka’s land territory and two-thirds of its winding coast, Prabhakaran lost it all by the time he was cornered and killed in in May 2009.