Sri Lanka's response on 'Prabhakaran is alive' claim: calls rumours on LTTE chief 'joke'

A day after a noted Tamil nationalist leader claimed that LTTE's Velupillai Prabhakaran is alive, Sri Lanka reacted to the remark.

The island nation's Defence Ministry dismissed the claim as a 'joke' stating that DNA proof exists to assert that Prabhakaran was killed in 2009.

"It is confirmed that he was killed on 19 May 2009. The DNA has proved it," Colonel Nalin Herath, Sri Lanka's defence ministry spokesman told news agency PTI in Colombo.

Following a DNA test, Sri Lanka had confirmed that Prabhakaran was killed. Videos and photographs showing a dead Prabhakaran with some visible injuries were also made available by the Sri Lanka, as per a PTI report.

Pazha Nedumaran, president of the World Tamil Federation, said on 13 February 2023 that Prabhakaran is alive and well.

Prabhakaran would soon announce a plan for the "liberation" of the Tamil race, and he should be supported by all Tamil people, Nedumaran was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Nedumaran said that the political atmosphere and fierce opposition to the Rajpaksas by the Sinhalese people in Sri Lanka has created the right conditions for the leader of the Eelam Tamils, Prabhakaran, to emerge.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a guerrilla outfit that tried to establish a separate Tamil state in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. 'Eelam' in Tamil denotes the homeland of the Tamil people.

(with PTI inputs)

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