By IANS
Chennai : The police here have arrested three men with connections with the Lankan Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the banned Tamil outfit from Sri Lanka.
The arrested men belonged to the Sea Tigers, the sea wing of the LTTE.
“They were in the process of sending a boat to Sri Lanka used to smuggle essential commodities from India,” the police said in a press release.
The press added that sleuths of the Chennai police’s crime wing were doing routine checking at the Chennai airport Saturday night, when they noticed three men moving around suspiciously in the car parking lot at about 8 p.m.
The police also recovered Rs. 4,78,290 in Indian currency and Rs. 4,140 Sri Lankan rupees and four mobile phones from the group.
The men, according to the police, had tried to hire a boat. The boat was reportedly being harboured in Mallipattinam on the Thanjavur coast, about 450 km south.
They were taken into custody and questioned. The police said one of them was identified as Jayakumar, a Sea Tiger leader.
The 34-year-old Sea Tiger leader belonged to Velvettithurai in Jaffna region of northern Sri Lanka. His other two accomplices were identified as James alias Raja, 46, a Lankan Tamil, and Ravikumar, 42, a resident of Chennai.
Police sources told the media that Jayakumar was also known as Gowri Shankar. He had fought the Sri Lankan forces from 1995 to 2006.
He had come to India in February, the police said. Sea Tiger chief Soosai had asked him to get a trawler from India for use by the LTTE on the Lankan coast.
Jayakumar had come to Thanjavur in search of such a boat. He had bought a boat costing Rs.4,80,000 sent by Soosai and another LTTE fund controller Karuppaih, based in London.
The police said, Jayakumar had admitted that he had planned to send the boat to Sri Lanka with James.
James had travelled to India three times this year alone.
In October he had also procured computer spare parts, swimming accessories and GPS devices, and smuggled these across to Jaffna.
James said they had planned to give the money to a man called Raji towards cost of the boat.
The Chennai man is said to have helped the Lankan Tamils buy the boat. The police said further investigations are on.