COLOMBO: K T Rajasingham, veteran Sri Lankan Tamil journalist, has informed the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) that he has reliable information that the 1975 assassination of the high profile Jaffna mayor Alfred Duraiyappah was not carried out by the LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, as the LTTE had claimed.
Without naming the source, Rajasingham said that the person who pulled the trigger was Kandeepan, son of the moderate Tamil leader, A Amirthalingam.
“Who shot and killed the Jaffna Mayor Duraiyappah? Was it Prabhakaran? In fact, it was not the handiwork of Prabhakaran,” Rajasingham told the presidential panel in a written submission made in September. “The LTTE leader claimed that he was the one who shot and killed Duraiyappah. It was a false claim by a killer maniac,” Rajasingham, who currently edits Asian Tribune, said.
“In fact, according to my confidential source, of which I have no doubts, it was Kandeepan, the eldest son of Amirthalingam, one of the popular leaders of Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) movement, who shot and killed Duriyappah to avenge the impact of certain poetical writings criticising his mother (Mangayarkarasi),” he said.
The ITAK later merged with other Tamil parties to become Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), which Amirthaligam led till the LTTE shot him dead in July 1989.
Recalling the first high profile assassination carried out by Prabhakaran’s Tamil New Tigers (the earlier incarnation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), Rajasingham said: “Duriyappah, though a Christian, used to go regularly to Hindu temples, especially to the Varadaraja Perumal Temple at Ponnalai. When he went there on July 27, 1975, four young men were waiting for him. As per the popular reports, as he left his car, one of the young men opened fire from point blank range, and he collapsed and died. The assailants jumped into Duraiyappa’s car and sped away. Prabakaran, a secondary school dropout from the coastal town of Valvetiturai, claimed credit for the killing.”
“But as I myself was a resident of Point Pedro, and had close contact with the youths of the area, I learnt very reliably that Prabakaran was nowhere near when Duriyappah was slain, but he joined those youths who were involved in the killing only subsequently.”
In those days, it was widely accepted that the youths were patronised and were controlled by A Amirthalingham and by V Dharmalingham, both of the ITAK, he recalled.