Send Prabhakaran's mother to Tamil Nadu, says Vaiko

Following the death of LTTE leader V Prabhakaran in the battlefield in May last year and his father Velupillai in a Colombo suburb last week, Marumalarchi DMK leader Vaiko and Prabhakaran's cousin Rajendran have asked the Sri Lankan Government to send the Tiger leader's aged mother Parvathi to Tamil Nadu.

Mr Vaiko reached out to the people of Valvettiturai in Jaffna during the funeral of Velupillai on Sunday through telephone and his speech was played out through a loudspeaker. He said in a tribute that Velupillai was an honest and upright man who lived an independent life. He offered to take care of Parvathi Ammal in his house in Chennai.

The funeral was attended by Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi leader Thol Tirumavalavan and Tamil Nationalist Movement leader P Nedumaran.

In an interview to a web-based television channel, Prabhakaran's cousin Rajendran, in whose house in Musiri near Tiruchi Velupillai and Parvathi stayed for nearly four years till 2003, said: "Prabhakaran's sister Vinothini has written to Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa to send Parvathi to my home in Musiri. I request the Indian government also to put pressure on Sri Lanka to send her here to spend her last days in peace".

Prabhakaran's parents initially stayed with their daughter Vinothini in Tiruchi from 1983 till she migrated to Canada.

Then they moved into the house of Rajendran, a Siddha doctor who had been attending on them.

Rajendran said that after Prabhakaran's parents, who left Mullivaikkal and moved to the Menik farm camp for the displaced people in Vavunia in May last year, were taken into custody by the Sri Lankan army and put up at a cantonment in Panagoda,

"Vinothini and I kept appealing to the governments of Sri Lanka and India to release them. The Lankan government did not allow them to join their relatives". Now that Velupillai had died, the Government should allow the old lady to stay with him, Mr Rajendran said.

- Asian Tribune -