By P.K. Balachandran, IANS
Colombo : T. Maheswaran, an outspoken opposition Sri Lankan Tamil MP, was shot dead Tuesday along with a civilian when he was praying at a Hindu temple here to usher in the New Year.
A man armed with an automatic rifle fired at the unsuspecting politician, his entourage and other worshipers at about 10 a.m., instantly killing the civilian and injuring a dozen people including Maheswaran.
Private guards hired by the MP for his protection fired back, injuring the gunman. Maheswaran was a member of the opposition United National Party (UNP).
The bleeding MP and the assailant were rushed to the Colombo National Hospital. Efforts to save Maheswaran, 41, failed but the assailant survived. He was being questioned, the police told reporters.
Police identified him as Thomas Wellingdon from Gurunagar in the northern Tamil-speaking district of Jaffna.
Initial reports had described the dead civilian as a bodyguard of Maheswaran.
Being New Year’s day, the Ponnambala Vaneswara temple, dedicated to Lord Siva, was crowded with worshippers when the terror struck.
Panic reigned at the shrine and the surrounding areas. Worshippers screamed and tried to escape the scene, witnesses said.
It was not known if the gunman was attached to any political or armed group.
A leading military expert who did not want to be identified said the assassination had serious security implications because the temple was located outside the Colombo harbour, a high security area.
“If the Tamil Tigers have done it, it is cause of more worry because it shows they are prowling in the city in a high security zone,” the expert said.
The government and the police refused to blame anyone for the assassination. In normal circumstances, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) gets blamed quickly for any major act of violence in Sri Lanka.
Maheswaran had been facing threats from all sides, political sources said. He had a controversial career as a politician and businessman in Colombo and also in Jaffna when the LTTE held sway over the region.
A leading Colombo-based trader and also a former minister, Maheswaran had represented Colombo and Jaffna districts in parliament in his long career in politics.
In recent times, he had threatened to expose people behind a string of killings, abductions and extortions in Jaffna.
He had told a private TV channel recently that he would come out with an expose in parliament when it meets Jan 8.
Maheswaran had also complained that the government had reduced his police security drastically in the middle of December, leaving just two constables to protect him. He said he employed private guards at a very high cost.
UNP spokesman Tissa Attanayake blamed the government for the tragedy.
“The government had pruned his security in order to kill him,” the web edition of the Daily Mirror newspaper quoted Attanayake as saying.
Leading Tamil newspaper editor N. Vithiatharan told IANS that the international community needed to put pressure on the government to restore state security to political leaders.
The government had drastically cut security cover given to former ministers Anura Bandaranaike and Rauff Hakeem as well as Tamil MP Mano Ganesan.
The withdrawals allegedly followed the crossover of Bandaranaike and Hakeem to the opposition, and Ganesan being chosen the first runner up for this year’s Freedom Defenders Award given by the US government.
Bandaranaike, a brother of former president Chandrika Kumaratunga, had said that the government had thrown opened “the front gate to (LTTE chief Velupillai) Pranbhakaran’s assassins” to kill politicians like him.