Prabhakaran’s brother claims sections of Tamil diaspora defrauding people in the name of late leader

Colombo: The brother of Velupillai Prabhakaran has for the first time publicly admitted that his brother and his entire family were killed in 2009 and warned of a bunch of Tamilians defrauding people by claiming that the late LTTE founder and some of his family, especially one daughter, are alive.

“Velupillai Prabhakaran, his wife and their three children are dead, all of them perishing in the final stages of Sri Lanka’s war in 2009,” Velupillai Manoharan has declared publicly for the first time, according to LankaFT portal.

LTTE, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, had run a military campaign for a separate Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern provinces of the island nation for nearly 30 years before its collapse in May 2009 after the Sri Lankan Army killed its supreme leader V Prabhakaran.

Local media, including thefederal and dailymirror all quoted Jaffna's Monitor magazine’s latest issue carrying the interview of Manoharan, now based in Denmark.

This is a “huge scam” perpetrated by a section of the Tamil diaspora to cheat money from unsuspecting Tamils by insisting that Prabhakaran and some of his family members are still alive, portal said.

“As Prabhakaran’s elder brother, I felt it was my responsibility to end this nonsense,” Manoharan, who left Lanka in 1975, told the fortnightly journal. “Additionally, there have been false rumours that my brother is alive and living abroad.” According to dailymirror, Manoharan said, “My brother Prabhakaran and his entire family have passed away, achieving martyrdom. It is crucial to acknowledge this truth. I urge you not to be deceived by these fraudsters posing as my brother's family.” In recent months, a young Tamil woman living in the West has falsely claimed to be Prabhakaran’s daughter Thuvaraga (Dwarka), “deceiving the diaspora out of millions of dollars”, Manoharan said as quoted by dailymirror.