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SRI LANKA: THE UNTOLD
STORY
Chapter 56: The execution of Mahattaya
By K T Rajasingham
Mahendrarajah, alias Mahattaya, joined the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1978. He was
born in 1956, but unlike most of the LTTE leaders he was
not from Valvetiturai, but from Point Pedro East. He was
educated at Chidampara College, Valvetiturai. He joined
the LTTE in the same year as Sathasivam Krishnakumar,
alias Kittu, and Raghu. Mahattaya was from the Karaiyar
caste (fishing community), as was Velupillai
Prabhakaran, the LTTE supremo, who personally admitted
him into the organization.
Gradually, Mahattaya
rose up in the ranks and he was made the regional
commander of Vanni, and Kittu was given the command of
Jaffna. From the very early days Kittu and Mahattaya
were rivals and competed for position and power within
the militant organization. Kittu was well placed as the
commander of the Jaffna region, a position that went
with international publicity, and he was the envy of
all. On March 31, 1987, an unidentified man fired at and
lobbed a powerful grenade at the Mitsubishi Lancer
carrying Kittu on Jaffna's Second Cross Street. Kittu
survived, but his right leg was severed below the knee.
After the incident, Major Aruna, alias
Selvaswamy Selvakumar, of the LTTE, went berserk. He
fired his M-16 at innocent captives from the rival Tamil
militant groups at Kandan Karunai prison, killing scores
of them. The LTTE high command did not approve of the
carnage and when Aruna died in a battle, they decided
not to include his name in the martyrs' list.
After Kittu became crippled and was forced out
of the military arena, Mahattaya became virtually second
to Prabhakaran and was delegated with the authority to
negotiate with Indian High Commission officials
regarding the establishment of the Interim
Administration of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
Mahattaya signed a 14-point agreement with Puri, the
First Secretary (Political), of the High Commission of
India in Sri Lanka, on September 28, 1987, in his
capacity as the deputy leader of the LTTE. This was the
first time that he was officially elevated to the
position of deputy.
Prior to signing of this
agreement, Mahattaya was dispatched to Batticaloa by
Prabhakaran to deal with the leaders of the Peoples
Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE). On
September 11, Mahattaya went to Batticaloa with his
assistant Yogi and met with the region's LTTE
commanders, Reagan and Karuna. It was finalized in a
secret confab to assemble 100 Tiger cadres and disperse
them in groups in various locations to attack EPRLF,
PLOTE and ENDLF members, who were considered rival
groups.
On September 13, Mahattaya invited R
Vasudeva, the deputy leader of the PLOTE for a peace
meeting. The unsuspecting Vasudeva went in a van with
his close associates, but on the way, they were attacked
by LTTE gunmen. Within two hours, some 70 other members
of other organizations were killed by the Tiger cadres
led by Mahattaya.
On October 2, 1987, Sri Lankan
navy apprehended 17 LTTE men traveling in a boat off the
coast of Point Pedro. The navy disarmed them and removed
the black threads with a cyanide capsules hung from
their necks and they were locked up at the Sri Lankan
military complex at Palali. Out of the 17 arrested, two
of them were prize catches: Pulenthiran, the regional
commander of the LTTE for Trincomalee and Kumarappah,
the regional commander for Jaffna.
The Sri Lanka
government alleged that these LTTE men had acted in
breach of the Indo-Lanka Accord by transporting arms
from Tamil Nadu in India and ordered that they be taken
to Colombo for inquiry.
Meanwhile, on October 4,
Mahattaya and Anton Balasingham were granted permission
to meet their arrested colleagues.
On the
evening of October 5, when they were about be forced to
board a flight to Colombo, all of them swallowed cyanide
capsules. which had been given to them by Mahattaya and
Anton Balasingham. This had been done on the orders of
Prabhakaran.
Subsequently, Mahattaya, on October
6, launched the LTTE-Indian war with a rocket attack on
a jeep carrying five India soldiers near the gate of the
cement factory at Kankesanthurai. Following the outbreak
of the war, the LTTE leadership then began to relocate
its headquarters to the Vanni region, a sprawling jungle
terrain south of the Jaffna peninsula, in the mainland.
People in Chunnakam reported that they saw
Mahattaya visiting a house in Malappe, a small village
in Chunnakam, in the vicinity of the railway station.
They said that, he had lunch in the house, and many
bodyguards were in attendance.
Mahattaya then
crossed the Kantherodai-Punnalaikadduwan road and walked
through the tobacco gardens towards Jaffna. After the
fall of Chunnakam on October 10, within 17 days the
entire Jaffna Peninsula had fallen into the hands of the
Indian army and the LTTE cadres fell back into jungle
hideouts in Vanni. Mahattaya was at
Putur-Vannivilankulam and Prabhakaran at Alampil so they
were unable to meet in person due to the intensity of
the India offensive.
In the meantime, several
newspapers reported that Prabhakaran had been killed in
a shootout. Obviously he was not dead, and the story is
believed to have been planted by Indian intelligence
agents to disrupt the Premadasa-LTTE talks that began in
April 1989, but the ply did not work. In November 1989
Mahattaya went to Colombo to participate in the talks,
and he is said to have established a good rapport with
Premadasa.
While in Colombo the LTTE formed a
political party, the Peoples' Front of Liberation Tigers
(PFLT - in Tamil, Makkal Munnani). Mahattaya was given
the role of president and Yogaratnam Yogi was made
secretary general. The constitution of the PFLT provided
the basis for a genuine democratic party, allowing for
the representation and participation of all sorts of
people. A copy of the party's constitution, along with
an application for the registration of the party, was
handed over to the Commissioner of Election. He, after
consulting with President Premadasa, reluctantly
registered PFLT as a political party with the Tiger
symbol as its emblem.
The inaugural conference
of PFLT was held at Vaharai, in the Batticaloa district,
from February 24 to March 1, 1990. Mahattaya presided
over the conference successfully and organizers from
throughout Northeast gathered and formally endorsed
PFLT's constitution and manifesto. Under the
chairmanship of Mahattaya the organizers resolved to:
Dissolve the undemocratically elected Northeast
Provincial Council and urge the government hold fresh
elections;
Urge the government to repeal the sixth
amendment to the constitution;
Urge for the unity of
Muslims and Tamils to fight to win their rights and
protect their homelands and improve their economic
conditions;
Prevent Sinhala colonization in the North
and East;
Sri Lankan security forces should not be
involved in the law and order functions in the North and
East;
Political rights to be granted to Tamils of
Indian origin, and
The lifting of the emergency
regulations currently in force in the North and East. It
was estimated nearly 15,000 people participated in this
conference, after which Mahattaya met Premadasa and
demanded:
All patrolling by the Sri Lankan army in
the Eastern Province should cease immediately;
All
army camps situated near schools and places of worships
in Tamil areas should be removed and:
Security camps in the North and East should not
exceed one or two per district. When Mahattaya was in
Colombo, he was very popular among government leaders
and was contacted by many regarding a number of affairs.
During this period, it was said that, Mahattaya and
Premadasa had established a good working relationship.
Also it was reported that, Mahattaya had established
contacts with the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) of
India, the intelligence agency. S Chandrasekeran, alias
Chandran, the Additional Secretary of the Cabinet
Secretariat and the high-powered officer in charge of
RAW operations in Sri Lanka, met Mahattaya secretly in
Colombo.
Suddenly it became known that on the
orders of Mahattaya his right hand confidante, Visu,
assassinated A Amirthalingham, the Secretary General of
the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), and S
Yogeswaran, an ex-Member of Parliament from Jaffna.
Simultaneously, on the orders of the Tiger
supremo, another commando group left Alampil for Colombo
with orders to weed out anti-LTTE elements in Colombo.
While the negotiations with the government were on,
Mahattaya ordered Visu to execute the LTTE- imposed
death sentence of February 1987 on Amrithalingham.
Meanwhile, Mahattaya was sent to the Eastern
Province to take charge of the LTTE's military campaign
against the TNA and the Sri Lankan security forces. As
usual, he was ruthless and brutal and was involved in
attacks on civilians and the massacre of Muslims, which
brought the wrath of Muslims nationally and also
internationally.
But after the murder of
Amrithalingham, Pottu Amman, alias Shanmugalingham
Sivasankaran, smelt foul play and he began to monitor
closely the activities of Mahattaya. The intelligence
unit, the Aiyyana Group, broke into and monitored the
powerful two-way radio communication emerging from
Mahattaya's base.
Meantime, Prabhakaran summoned
a cross section of the citizens of Jaffna who were long
time supporters of the LTTE and read out a 10-page
charge-sheet against Mahattaya. Prabhakaran said that
Mahattaya had been asked to respond to the charge-sheet
by July 31. Prior to that, it is learnt that he had
requested Mahattaya to meet him, but he refused to do
so. After July 31, Mahattaya was approached for his
explanation, but his curt rejoinder was, "Let
Prabhakaran come to me if he wants my explanation." As
Mahattaya was adamant, it became a prestige issue for
the leader to subdue his deputy.
On the
information provided by the intelligence unit,
Prabhakaran relieved Mahattaya of the leadership of the
Makkal Munnani (PFLT), and from the deputy leadership of
the LTTE. Prabhakaran sent him on a special assignment
to the Eastern Province. After General Denzil
Kobbekaduwa and others died in a land mine blast on
August 8, 1992, the military balance began to tilt in
the LTTE's favor, and Prabhakaran recalled Mahattaya and
gave him an inactive position, looking after the welfare
of refugees and injured LTTE cadres. He was also allowed
to retain his 75 personnel bodyguard unit.
Adele
Balasingham, in her The Will to Freedom, writes,
"Bala and I were well aware of the background to the
story of Mahattaya's downfall. The primary reason was
his utter mismanagement of the party and the effect on
the movement's support base. Mahattaya in his role as
the leader of the party and deputy leader of the LTTE,
assumed an autocratic style and appointed his henchmen
to the seats of power in the political organization in
violation of the party constitution. The constitution
stipulated an electoral system for the selection of the
party officials from village to district levels.
Mahattaya's action undermined the project of
democratization of the party organs and failed to
reflect the will of the people. Eventually PFLT became a
corrupt institution promoting the interests of a few
individuals, who were loyal to Mahattaya. The public
resentment was so widespread, it compelled the LTTE to
dissolve the party organization or risk further
alienation. Mahattaya lost his positions as party leader
as well as the deputy leader of the LTTE as a result.
Though the LTTE Central Committee and the General
Council made decision after lengthy discussions,
Mahathaya felt the move to oust was an act of personal
vendetta by Mr. Pirabakaran and he was determined to
challenge the decision." - Pages 296-297.
Gradually, events began to work against
Mahattaya, and Baby Subramaniam, one of the founding
leaders of the LTTE, became the deputy leader.
Pottu Amman and his group sustained serious
injuries but narrowly escaped death when an unidentified
assailant lobbed a bomb onto the vehicle in which they
were traveling, near Kopay. The situation worsened when
the LTTE became more and more suspicious of Mahattaya.
They found out that he had betrayed Kittu to the Indians
and Sri Lankan intelligence agencies, leading to Kittu's
death by suicide in the Palk straits in January 1993.
Again Adele Balasingham writes, "It was around
10pm on a hot day on March 1993 when Mr Mahendrarajah
[Mahattaya], the deputy head of the LTTE, entered our
residence in Kokuvil, Jaffna and announced he was going
to observe a fast-unto-death in our house and demanded a
room for that purpose.
"Mahattaya looked nervous
and agitated. Dressed casually in a sarong and shirt and
carrying a small luggage bag with a few personal items,
he claimed that his fast had begun the very moment he
entered our house and his four-wheel drive Pajero
vehicle was parked near the gate. Taken aback by this
sudden development, Bala and I queried as to why he
wanted to fast-unto-death and for what reason he had
chosen our residence, as the venue to launch his
campaign.
"Mahattaya explained that he was
disillusioned with the LTTE leadership, particularly
with Mr Pirabakaran, for removing him from the
chairmanship of the political party (PFLT) and also from
the deputy leadership of the LTTE. He said that the
decision was unfair and unacceptable and therefore he
wanted to register his protest in the form of fasting.
Insofar as his choice of our residence as the venue of
fasting was concerned, he explained that it was the
place where all leaders and commanders of the LTTE, as
well as the local journalists visit, therefore his
protest would be known to the entire movement as well as
to the public, if it is performed in our house.
"For several hours through the night, we pleaded
with Mahattaya to give up his fast and resolve the
matter through discussion with the leadership, rather
than undertaking this mode of protest. We also felt
unhappy over the choice of our residence as the venue of
his fasting. That would implicate us as accessories to
Mahattaya's scheme of things, in our view. Finally,
Mahattaya relented when we argued that he had the right
to protest, but not in our residence. He decided to give
up his fast when Bala promised to hand over his letter
of protest to Mr Pirabakaran. Thus, the drama ended in
the following morning and Mahattaya left our house with
his bodyguards and with an element of satisfaction that,
he had registered with the Balasingham by observing a
night of fasting. The incident was the tip of the
iceberg insofar as Mahattaya's affair was concerned as
we later learned." - Pages 296-297.
For the
first time, Munchari, a Tamil weekly from Canada, came
out with the news of the arrest and incarceration of
Mahattaya, on charges of treason by the Tiger Supremo
Prabhakaran.
Subsequently this writer conducted
interviews with those LTTE fighters who left the
organization and those who left for medical reasons with
the approval of the leadership. Fortunately, this writer
stumbled on two relatively middle-level senior LTTE
leaders, who happened to be members of the team that
went to arrest Mahattaya and his group.
When the
LTTE high command learnt that Mahattaya was responsible
for the death of Kittu, they acted immediately. They
urgently assembled a high-powered hit-squad, including
all their leading commanders, namely Sornam, the leader
of the elite Tiger commando group, Balraj the deputy
commander of the LTTE, Soosai, the commander of the Sea
Tigers, and others.
Pottu Amman, the
intelligence chief, led the hit-squad. The special squad
launched its operation to arrest Mahattaya on March 31,
1993, before dawn and they managed to overpower his
guards, without resistance in a base at Kokuvil.
When the squad entered the domestic quarters,
Mahattaya who was at that time inside the toilet. As he
emerged, Sornam told him, "Annan [elder brother] wants
you, come with us," Unsuspecting, Mahathaya, told him,
"You better go, I will follow you." Sornam reiterated,
"No, you have to come now, Annan wants you immediately."
Mahattaya, was agitated a little and said, "I told you
to go, I will come." Sensing the mood inside the living
room, Pottu Amman, who stood outside the main entrance,
entered with the other commanders and said, " No, you
must come at once." When Mahattaya saw Pottu Amman and
others, he sensed the seriousness and told his wife
without losing his equanimity, "Do not worry, whatever
decision Annan takes, it will always be the right one,"
and followed them. They took him to an intelligence unit
base at Chavakachceri for interrogation.
At the
time of Mahattaya's arrest, his trusted lieutenant, K D
Suresh, was away at Putur-Vannivilankulam to convey
Mahattaya's orders to their accomplice, planted as one
of Prabhakaran's guards.
Subsequently, Suresh and
other fugitives were arrested and turned over to the
intelligence unit. A week before the arrest of
Mahattaya, the LTTE's intelligence unit spotted in
Jaffna city, a handicapped ex-LTTE cadre named Engineer,
alias Manickavasagam Mahendrajah. One of his legs had
been lost during the Jaffna Fort military campaign.
The LTTE discharged him and he went to Chennai
by boat to obtain a prosthesis, a Jaipur foot. Pottu
Amman ordered his men to watch Engineer's activities.
They arrested him on the third day, while he was
returning from Mahattaya's base at Koandvil and took him
for questioning.
At the interrogation it became
evident that, there was a ploy to destabilize the LTTE.
According to Engineer, he was arrested in Madras on
suspicion, in connection with Rajiv Gandhi's
assassination, while he was living in Chennai. RAW
agents, who had a full dossier on him, spotted him and
initiated confidential discussions. Subsequently, they
sent Engineer, via Colombo, with a message to Mahattaya.
RAW instructed Mahattaya to dump Prabhakaran and to be
ready to assume the leadership of a North-East
autonomous region. After the meeting with Engineer,
Mahattaya dispatched Suresh with instructions to arrange
the assassination of Prabhakaran.
At the
investigation, it became clear that Suresh, who had
arrived at Putur-Vannivilakulam, could not establish
contact with their hit-man to convey Mahattaya's urgent
order.
In the meantime, the LTTE cadres, who
were in a prison at Vellore, Tamil Nadu, staged a
dramatic escape. The LTTE dispatched two speed boats to
bring back 14 escapees safely and gave them a rousing
heroes' welcome. Meanwhile, the LTTE office in Jaffna
received a letter regarding the phony jail-break staged
by RAW.
On receipt of the letter, the
intelligence unit alerted the leadership. Within a few
days ,they arrested those 14 masqueraded as heroes. At
the inquiry it became clear that, RAW operatives
regularly visited them and held lengthy discussions and
finally they agreed to work for the RAW.
According to RAW's instructions, those 14
escapees were to free Mahattaya and also to arrange the
assassination of Prabhakaran. It came to light that one
Susilan, a confidante of Mahattaya, was the one planted
to assassinate Prabhakaran. Susilan, after his arrest,
admitted that he was instructed to shoot down
Prabhakaran.
The media in Sri Lanka were aware
that Mahattaya had been arrested and was under
investigation, but nobody knew the charges and the
plight of Mahattaya. Even in 1998, news items appeared
that Mahattaya was still alive and he was shown to LTTE
cadres in a jail in Thunukai.
In 2001, when
Adele Balasingham published her book, The Will to
Freedom, supposed to be the official version of the
LTTE, the world came to know that Mahattaya, had been
officially executed on December 28, 1994.
The
LTTE high command had decided against publicizing
Mahattaya's investigation report, thus keeping many
intriguing issues in secret.
Adele Balasingham
in her The Will to Freedom writes, "About a month
later [From the date Mahattaya wanted to have the fast
at the residence of Balasingham] Mahathaya and some of
his close associates were arrested by the LTTE's
intelligence wing for conspiring to assassinate Mr
Pirabakaran. In a massive cordon and search of his camp
in Manipay - supervised by senior commanders of the LTTE
- Mahattaya was taken into custody along with his
friends. We were shocked and surprised by this sudden
turn of events. Mr Pirabakaran, who visited our
residence that day, told us briefly of a plot hatched by
the Indian external intelligence agency - the RAW -
involving Mahattaya as the chief conspirator to
assassinate him and to take over the leadership of the
LTTE. He also said that further investigations were
needed to unravel the full scope of the conspiracy.
"The investigations took several months to
complete. Mahattaya, his close associates involved in
the conspiracy and several other cadres, who functioned
directly under him, were thoroughly investigated.
Finally a complete story of a plot emerged. Confessions
by all main actors were tape recorded and video filmed.
The leadership also arranged a series of meetings for
all the LTTE cadres to explain the aims and objectives
behind the plot. Apart from Mahattaya, other senior
cadres who were involved in the conspiracy were allowed
to make public confessions during those meetings
confirming their involvement. It was a complicated and
bizarre story of the Indian intelligence agency
establishing secret contacts with Mahattaya through his
close associates, with the promise of huge funds and
political backing from India, if the plot succeeded and
the LTTE leadership was eliminated. A former bodyguard
of Mr Pirabakaran was secretly released from the Indian
jail in Tamil Nadu and trained as the main assassin. He
was sent to Jaffna with an intriguing story of a
successful jailbreak as cover. His assignment was to
plant a time bomb in Pirabakaran's bedroom as a part of
the overall plot planned by Mahattaya. The young man as
soon as he landed in Jaffna was once again included
amongst Mr Pirabakaran's bodyguards. Surprisingly, just
a few days before his arrest, he visited our residence
to tell us fabulous stories about his jail break. The
investigation established without any doubt that
Mahattaya was the chief conspirator. The plot was to
assassinate Mr Pirabakaran and some senior commanders
loyal to him and assume the leadership of the
organization. On 28 December 1994, Mahattaya and few of
his fellow conspirators were executed on charges of
conspiracy to eliminate the leadership." - Page 298.
"The few of his fellow conspirators were
eliminated" were the words used by Adele Balasingham for
the execution of nearly 257 cadres who were loayal to
Mahattaya. It was told that these cadres were lined up
in a coconut estate, located near Chavakachcheri, shot
and killed and all the bodies were dumped and a mass
cremation was done.
Chapter
55: Assassination of Athulathmudali
Chapter 57: Kittu - the LTTE legend
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