Dismissing reports that the LTTE’s one-time intelligence chief Pottu Amman had been arrested in Hong Kong, the Sri Lankan Army on Thursday said he was dead for years.

The Army had sufficient evidence to believe that the senior member of the rebel Tigers — who is on Interpol’s wanted list in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi — was dead, according to spokesman Ruwan Wanigasooriya.

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Though charge-sheeted in India in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, his name, along with that of LTTE chief V. Prabakaran, was removed from the list as the designated court observed that both were killed in the Sri Lankan Army’s offensive.

On Thursday, some Tamil and English websites in Sri Lanka carried reports of Pottu Amman being arrested in Hong Kong and brought to Sri Lanka. Rejecting the possibility, Brigadier Wanigasooriya said: “Many of those who surrendered after the war confirmed to us that Pottu Amman had succumbed to injuries during the final phase of the war. We did not find his body, but he is dead.”

Confirming the position, Chief of Defence Staff Jagath Jayasuriya, Army Commander in the Vanni during the last phase of the war, said: “I was there…though we could not retrieve his body, we knew he was dead.”

Sri Lankan Army officials said it was likely that some LTTE sympathisers floated the rumour to draw attention or possibly for fund raising.
(The Hindu)