Political Complexities in Jaffna & the Killing of Rajani Thiranagama

BEING Chapter 3 of Palmyra Fallen, from Rajani to War’s End, by Rajan Hoole ….. Published 2015 …. a book printed and bound by Global Printing Works, 5 Stork Place, Colombo 10 …. a chapter entitled “Some Crucial Pieces of the Jigsaw” … [with the highlights here –– except for those in black — being impositions by The Editor, Thuppahi]

 “To everything there is a season…A time to be born and a time to die…A time to weep and a time to laugh: a time to mourn and a time to dance…I know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it”- The Book of Ecclesiastes

Dayapala & Rajani Thiranagama in 1984 .. . well before her assassination in late 1989

Dayapala in later years

 

3.1 The Sands Run Out

More recently, we have been able to put together more detailed information about Rajani’s killing. Given that much water has since flowed under the bridge, we felt that while placing the truth about her murder on a record that adequately traces its manner, purpose and the parties involved, it would also be appropriate to bring out a publication that allows today’s reader to see her relevance to the present. As is evident from our account, Rajani’s killing was well planned, mobilising a network of LTTE contacts and agents. Here in Chapter 3, we detail the cold-blooded murder and cover-up by the LTTE and the names of those who were involved at the time. In Chapter 4, we discuss who within the LTTE was involved.

3.1.2 The use of students in typical LTTE-style killings.   First, it is important to note that a large number of students studying in the University and surrounding schools were boarded in the area. During the Indian Army’s presence the LTTE often used very young cadres for killing and spying operations. School dropouts frequently imposed themselves on former classmates. One youth, now in Canada, who was present in one of the boarding houses, said that two boys involved in Rajani’s death, Kandeepan and Milos, came running to their room south of the University soon after she was shot. Their role, as suggested by circumstances, was likely to cover the area and warn of any intrusions that might result in the operation being exposed or compromised since an Indian Army camp was nearby at Tinnevely Junction. These boys would have made it to the railway track to the west of the Faculty and run south along the track. A university employee told us that soon after the killing, two LTTE-ers had come into the main university premises south of the Medical Faculty and were at the water tank in front of the Science Faculty.

Kandeepan was the younger brother of Curdles (a senior intelligence functionary who died in the water bowser mishap in Navatkuli in February 1987). Kandeepan and Milos were young killers used by the LTTE at that time, as were  Lollo and Mathy. Lollo for example used to go about in school uniform carrying name lists and pictures of intended victims given by his superiors. Credited with about 60 murders, he went crazy and acquired a reputation for spending long spells alone at cemeteries. Yet all four were pure and simple killers and disposable at that. There was in their killings no intention of concealment. Reports immediately came, associating the killer with the victim, often a common publicly witnessed killing. The Indian Army hunted down all the four mentioned in late 1989 and the LTTE did not miss them. Rajani’s killing was a sophisticated operation, not the kind given to these young killers. They were, one infers, deployed as part of the concealment operation.

Key LTTE intelligence operatives came to Bharathy Community Centre in Pungankulam regularly, including Charles and Bosco, both leading subordinates of the intelligence chief, Pottu Amman. One who came less often was Kapil Amman, Pottu’s deputy. While Bosco did not offer a reason for killing Rajani, Kapil Amman, who came to the Centre a few days after the killing, said that she was killed for campaigning overseas against the policies of the LTTE.

3.1.3 The Cold-blooded Killing: The late Prof. Kanagasundaram was the first head of the Anatomy Department; he was also the Dean of Medicine and had recruited Rajani. (He previously taught at the National University of Singapore.) When Prof. Kanagasundaram and some others left after the July 1983 communal violence, Rajani on her return from Britain, with her doctorate, became the only qualified member of the anatomy staff, although the department’s cadre had six positions. Mr. Kulendran, who was a technical officer in the Anatomy Department, who had joined in 1981, testified to how Rajani was the only medical don to be on the premises, amidst considerable fear and uncertainty, to motivate and lead the non-academic staff in reopening the faculty after the Indian Army offensive in 1987. He recalled Rajani firmly arguing with and persuading Brigadier Manjit Singh to help them reopen.

When Rajani went to England in June 1989 for three months, there was no qualified lecturer in Anatomy. Kulendran recalled that the Dean, Prof. Balasubramaniam, had written to her asking her to return and conduct the Anatomy exams for the 2^nd MBBS. At the same time Kulendran had heard that on account of the Indian Army searching her office and her home, which both had a large collection of Marxist literature, her friends had advised her not to return. But she returned on 3^rd September.

Upon Rajani’s return, she found that a final year student and LTTE member, Prabhakaran, had been shot and injured by a pro-Indian group while returning from clinicals on a bicycle. He survived because the Indian Army found him and warded him in Jaffna Hospital. As if to excuse the shooting an Indian Army official told the Vice Chancellor that the student was a confirmed LTTE member. Taken aback by this development, Rajani asked her colleagues why the Faculty, the University and the student body had not confronted the Indian Army on this. After all, the latter had given an assurance that people would not be persecuted for their political views provided they did not carry arms. The injured student was unarmed.

Rajani discovered to her alarm that contrary to the University’s practice, the students supporting the LTTE wanted the shooting of student Prabhakaran by an ally of the Indian Army suppressed. The Medical Faculty was then operating as something of an LTTE camp. The Indian Army which had its suspicions was holding back only because of the political cost. The LTTE lobby was worried that should the issue of student Prabhakaran be given prominence, the Indian Army would crack down on the Medical Faculty to prove their point. This was the nightmare that Rajani dreaded: By using the University for its short-term ends the LTTE was silencing the University as a voice of conscience and a centre of non-violent resistance to violations of the people’s rights.

A few days later, Rajani hosted a lunch for the staff in her department at a restaurant near Tinnevely Farm. During the lunch she told her staff casually in Tamil that death to this Thamilichchi (Tamil woman) is not far away. (Several other premonitions of her death, including that the killer would be one born like herself of a Tamil mother have been cited from her last letters in No More Tears Sister[1]. After lunch, they had a happy session where Rajani sang some English songs and danced.

 On the 13^th September 1989, Majors S.K. Singh and Nautyal of the Gurkha Regiment called at Rajani’s room in the Medical Faculty and there ensued an argument. Rajani told them with characteristic firmness that they had no business to raid her house during her absence in England and harass those who stayed there and that they should not come there and alarm her children, but could arrest her if they wished to question her. The July raid was done to obtain copies of the pre-publication edition of our book, The Broken Palmyra. The meeting ended on a strained note.

Soon afterwards, the two most prominent LTTE students in the medical faculty (see chapter 2) Sooriyakumar and Dharmendra, the latter known for carrying a pistol in the university premises, came in to speak to her. In her frank manner she told them what happened, that The Broken Palmyra had cropped up in the conversation, but that she did not fear anything serious and could handle the matter herself. The conversation drifted towards a subject that had a note of menace. There were already rumours that the Indian Army would pull out. LTTE circles in particular knew that President Premadasa had given them a carte blanche to deal with any opposition to them as they pleased. Dharmendra told Rajani that once the Indian Army withdrew, it would take them only two days to wipe out the EPRLF and other groups allied to the Indians, and then they would return to war with the Sri Lankan government.

Rajani asked, “Why do you want to wipe out those poor conscripts and others very much like yourselves?” Dharmendra replied that they were traitors. Rajani shot back, “According to your definition I am also a traitor. You will kill me as well.” Dharmendra did not respond to this. This was one of the rare occasions Rajani had any kind of two-way discussion with LTTE students. Their characteristic conduct was to listen to her, but not engage. Hitherto they found her standing up to the Indian Army useful in protecting students with LTTE links who were detained or threatened. Now they had visions of becoming all-powerful and she was an obstacle.

When Rajani began to have significant dealings with Dharmendra. he had a roommate of Hill County Tamil origin who was a medical student. The Hill Country student told Rajani that he feared for his safety as Dharmendra had accused him of sending letters purportedly from the LTTE warning students against sitting for examinations, when it was actually Dharmendra who sent these letters. Rajani told Dharmendra that because of their insensitivity Tamils in Jaffna were already isolated, and giving the impression that Hill Country Tamils were not welcome in Jaffna would do the Tamils and the University immense harm.

On another occasion, Dharmendra had come running to Rajani when the Indian Army searched for him, and Rajani assured him that she would always defend the right of students to hold and express their own political views. She had at times wondered whether he had any sense of loyalty to her or would one day put a bullet into her. After she was killed, he was seen indulging in emotional displays. Once he uttered, “Whoever killed Madam will not have peace in this life.”

A Hill Country student who fled Jaffna in 1990 and later obtained a transfer to another university, told a former colleague after Rajani’s murder that Dharmendra used to say that they would one day put a bullet into Madam’s (Rajani’s) head. Asked why he had not warned her, the Hill Country student replied that he had been afraid. He also confessed to being mortally afraid of a Medical Students’ Union president who had been his roommate.

Sooriyakumar, who topped in examinations, was by contrast outwardly respectful and restrained in his conduct, giving no hint of his influence and intimacy with the LTTE. He listened but never responded to Rajani’s arguments and pleas. A student who had been Sooriyakumar’s roommate said that though being very friendly, he later discovered Sooriyakumar was passing on information about him to the LTTE.As Rajani’s recent encounter with the Indian Army offered the LTTE an opportunity to kill her and shift the blame to the IPKF after the murder, Sooriyakumar predictably blamed the Indian party citing The Broken Palmyra as the cause.

 3.1.4 The Events of the 21^st September: Rajani conducted the viva voce exams for nearly 150 students, over four days for two hours each afternoon. On the final day, 21^st September, Kulendran remembers telling Rajani that the sari she wore looked well on her. Earlier that day before arriving at the university Rajani entertained two British visitors, Malcolm Rodgers and Anna Doney, to lunch at her home, which was situated in a lane that was 250 yards east of the Medical Faculty off Adiapatham Road. The following account of the lunch is taken from a contemporary record the author made:

“We talked a good deal about the situation. Rajani talked fast as though she had a great deal to say and not enough time to say it. She was looking sombre and was deeply anxious about the future of the community. She had expressed a premonition of her death a week after her return from Britain on 3^rd September. She had seen a British publisher about the publication of The Broken Palmyra, but had not received word. She remarked, “These fellows are sharks. They wouldn’t care if my brains were blown up.” I learnt later that she had talked about death a number of times. On 2^nd February when two students on a peaceful protest were killed by Indian Army firing, she had written to a friend reflecting on death – as a passing away from the pain of life… Following the murder of TULF leaders Amirthalingam and Yogeswaran on 13^th July, she wrote to a friend why this group should kill persons who were a spent force who posed no threat to them. She said perhaps for the first time that she sometimes feared Anton Balasingam, who harboured an intense hatred towards these leaders. Rajani was not her vivacious self.”

She then left on her bicycle to conduct viva voce examinations at the Faculty at 2.00 PM. A green hiring car that had dropped her visitors at her house was to come back about then, but did not turn up. We learnt later that some youths had stopped the car at the top of the lane. The driver got frightened and went away. Neither did he make contact with the visitors to collect his fare. In retrospect that was an indication of LTTE deployment in the area. A farmer in a field in another lane off Adiapatham Road in the same area later told one of our contacts that some youths he knew as LTTE told him earlier the same day to keep a lookout on movements in the area. These were facts obtained from some eyewitnesses:

We learnt from our contacts that soon after Rajani’s killing, some youths were seen running north from near the scene of the crime on Adiapatham Road. It was an area frequented by the LTTE and no one else could have got away with the intrusive activity recorded below.

There were peculiar goings-on in the Faculty premises the day Rajani was murdered. Around 3.00 PM three young men walked in through the main entrance of the Medical Faculty, all the way down the long foyer, and stopped in front of Rajani’s room just inside the Anatomy corridor to the right. While they looked at the room, some students approached them from behind and inquired about what they wanted. Taken by surprise they said they were looking for Dharmendra. Subsequently one of these youths was seen talking to Dharmendra in the faculty canteen.

Two other incidents took place between 3.00 PM and 5.00 PM while Rajani was at the viva voce examination. A man of about 35 years walked down the foyer and towards the end, glanced sideways. Realising he had been noticed, he turned left away from the Anatomy corridor and went into the Forensic Medicine corridor. He was heard trying a door as if looking for someone and then came out and went away.

Lastly, a security guard escorted in a stranger. Before reaching the end of the foyer, they turned right into a path leading into an open space alongside the Anatomy Department. Stopping in front of a window from where Rajani could be seen at the viva voce examination, the security guard was seen raising his hand, upon which they went away.

Kulendran remembered that towards the end of the afternoon, Rajani’s younger sister Sumathy, who taught English at the Arts Faculty, came to see her. He told Sumathy that the examinations would be over in 15 minutes. Sumathy went away saying she would talk to her later.  Once the examinations were over Rajani told him that she would be late the next day, as first thing in the morning she would go to Jaffna Hospital to give the Anatomy answer scripts to Dr. Ponnampalam. She set off on her bicycle carrying the answer scripts in a shoulder pack.

Rajani was killed at 5.45 PM between the Medical Faculty and her home.

After Rajani had left, Kulendran began to start his motorcycle, when her student Neethirajah ran to him and told him that Rajani had been shot. Bewildered as he was at the news, he accelerated his motorcycle until he found her on the road almost opposite the university guesthouse.

The guesthouse keeper, Asi, came and told them that the killer’s first shot had not been fatal and he heard Rajani shout in English, “Why are you shooting me?” One of the assassin’s subsequent shots went through an eye and pierced her head.

Kulendran went to Rajani’s body and wept. Thirunavukkarasu, a labourer from the department with a polio leg, and yet a hard worker, came from Tinnevely Junction, placed Rajani on his lap and cried beating his chest. By this time Rajani’s hands were shaking, and she was in the throes of death. Then Dr. Sritharan from the Mathematics Department arrived and became uncontrollably upset. Neighbours had, for fear, closed their house doors. Sritharan called out to them that a lady had been shot and needed help. The people who gathered began to fear that those who showed themselves close to her were also in danger of being killed. Mr. Brindabhan, an employee of the University who lived nearby, took Sritharan away.

Some of the students stopped a passing car and took Rajani to hospital. A short distance from where Rajani had fallen, Kulendran saw the backpack in which Rajani had carried the Anatomy examination answer scripts. He collected it and later handed it over to S.V. Parameswaran, Professor of Physiology. From the scene he went to Navalar Road to inform Rajani’s parents. He told the father euphemistically that Rajani was injured and had been taken to hospital. Her father Mr. Rajasingam was visibly very upset, and her mother Mahila fainted. He later found that Rajani’s body on reaching hospital had directly been taken to the mortuary. Mr. Rajasingam later went out alone on his bicycle in the dark to tell one of Rajani’s colleagues pithily in English, “Do you know? Rajani has been shot dead.”

For Kulendran, Rajani’s death darkened what would otherwise have been a happy occasion. Rajani and Prof. Kanagasundaram, then living in Singapore, had applied for a World Health Organisation scholarship to further his training for laboratory work in Anatomy. He had been informed on that very day of the success of the application for training in India. He was under the impression that the EPRLF, which was then allied to the Indian Army, had killed Rajani. His brother-in-law, a postmaster, cautioned him the same day, “Wait awhile, don’t be hasty… The truth will come out!”

Rajani’s killing was meticulously planned with clear knowledge of her work schedule and her route home. On this last day of the viva voce examination, given the late hour following a tiring day, she was likely to go straight home to her children. The timing of the killing coincided with the completion of the anatomy examinations.

Soon after Rajani was shot, it was Selvakumar, an off-duty security guard who had no particular reason to be there, who raised the alarm in the Medical Faculty. His actions evoked widespread suspicion.

Rajaratnam, then vice president of the Medical Students’ Union, had been an LTTE supporter, and parted company with it after it massacred members of other groups. Rajaratnam went into the Medical Faculty immediately afterwards, and found Sooriyakumar and Dharmendra there. One look at them convinced him that they were responsible. He needed nothing more.  He remained a strong and active supporter of moves to commemorate Rajani and a great strength to others in his defiant frame of mind.

Among the visitors who went to Rajani’s house out of concern for the family was Prof. Ramakrishnan, who taught Philosophy and was staying in the guest house nearby. He stayed for some time. Dr. M.A.M. Nuhman who taught Linguistics and Mrs. Chitra Maunaguru came in for a few minutes. Nuhman, a native of Kalmunai, had long identified with the Tamil struggle, but could not stay in Jaffna after the LTTE expelled the Muslims a year later. Another who came in during the night was Cynthia, a medical student and LTTE leader Kittu’s fiancee. Rajani had regularly reassured her when she returned after the Indian Army’s takeover and urged her to follow the medical course. She did not appear very comfortable, and struck some of those present as having been sent to spy. She spoke much, but ramblingly, and her embarrassed friend who was present, signalled her to stop.

3.2 Eye Witnesses to the Assassination

Saratha Thevi

Saratha Thevi was a young woman in deprived circumstances near Kokkuvil having a difficult time. Rajani had helped her medically and then she came to live at Rajani’s home. Although her education was only up to grade two, Saratha had an aptitude to learn fast and advanced as a respected paramedical worker, travelling daily to Tellipalai Hospital on her bicycle. Being close to Rajani, Saratha had an intuitive sense of Rajani’s situation. On that fateful day,  she was preoccupied with thoughts of imminent danger to Rajani. She recalled that she slapped herself hard on the face, worrying that something might happen to Rajani. She rushed home,   also since Rajani had been expecting guests and wanted her back at 5.30 PM. She cycled back along KKS Rd. and turned east into Adiapatham Road.

Nearing Rajani’s place, she heard several gunshots and saw Rajani who was cycling some distance ahead throw up her hands and fall on the road. Saratha rushed to her, and held her. A bullet had pierced one eye. Saratha noticed Rajani looking at her through the unaffected eye just before she died. She then noticed students rushing to the scene shouting, “Madam! Madam!” She also noticed the killer fleeing from the scene. He was short and light-skinned. Saratha was followed to the scene a short time later by Aachchi, the elderly lady who was Rajani’s housekeeper.

People of the locality later told Saratha that the killers were the LTTE. A few days after the killing, she was accosted by the LTTE who wanted to know how she came to know Rajani. She told them that Rajani had helped her when she was desperate and enabled her to become a self-respecting woman able to function on her own. She was unable to guess why she was asked. Most people she met greatly regretted Rajani’s loss. Saratha suffered from many sleepless nights after the killing. She went to a young doctor at Jaffna hospital for medicine. In explaining her sleeplessness, she expressed what Rajani had meant to her. The doctor gave her medicine, but remarked that Rajani’s death was no loss as far as they were concerned. It was an instance where ultra-nationalist politics, or contempt for one of their own number whom they could not understand, compromised the doctor’s role.

Hussain

Hussain (not the witness’ real name) had gone north down Karuwepulam Road, about a hundred yards east of the Medical Faculty entrance, to meet a surveyor on private business. On reaching Adiapatham Rd, upon his return about 5.45 PM, he saw a cyclist doubling a passenger and riding furiously. The passenger was clutching a revolver. Dropping the passenger on the road, twenty-five yards east of Hussain, close to the university guesthouse, the cyclist proceeded on his way. Hussain who knew Bosco, recognised him as the passenger who had alighted, but Bosco had evidently not noticed him. From the other testimonies (see below), we infer that the bicycle carrying Bosco had overtaken Rajani, while she was riding, and dropped him ahead of her. Bosco (who was now facing Rajani) shot her a few times. Hussain then observed him crossing the road, getting on to the pillion of a motorcycle, whose rider had been waiting for him a short distance east (away from the Medical Faculty towards Tinnevely Junction) and getting away. It was thus that first-hand information about the killing was initially in the possession of Jaffna’s Muslim quarter (see End Note).

A young medical student Manoranjan, who later made his mark as a journalist, was travelling to Colombo by train from Jaffna about December 1989. A student recognised him and they began talking. The student doing first-year medicine in Jaffna was a cousin of Manoranjan’s classmate and friend. The student said that he had seen Manoranjan helping with Rajani’s commemoration, but being unsure of his politics had hesitated to approach him. Once the train passed Vavuniya the student spoke more freely.

As though having decided to unburden himself the student spoke, “Uncle, I am the only eyewitness to Rajani’s killing. I am telling you because I do not want the truth to be buried.” He proceeded to tell his story. Rajani was the student’s anatomy teacher. His 2^nd MBBS was to be the following year. Rajani came out walking briskly after sitting with her fellow examiner Dr. Ponnampalam and finalising the viva results of his immediate seniors and repeats. Students waiting to talk to her about their performance did not stop her seeing she was tired. Our witness, the student, had already removed his bicycle when Rajani took hers. She smiled at him. Out of respect he waited for her to go and followed behind. On the road she proceeded east.

The student then observed a bicycle briskly overtaking him and going towards Rajani. It had evidently been waiting west of the faculty. Subsequently he saw a man fire at her using a revolver. The gunman, who had alighted from the bicycle, fired a few more bullets into Rajani who lay fallen on the road. The student in shock overtook the man and Rajani’s body. The student looked back as the killer finished. Their eyes met. The killer was about 35-years-old, well built and light-skinned.

The student immediately recognised him. He had seen the killer at the Medical Faculty a few months earlier; he was unusual looking and not a student. Friends in his native Pt. Pedro told him that the man was Bosco from the LTTE’s Intelligence Wing.

After witnessing the murder and returning to his room, he told his roommate what he saw. The roommate warned him not to talk about it. As the days wore on his fear did not abate. He decided to seek asylum abroad.

Inquiring about Bosco from former medical students of the late 1980s, we were told that while Aanjaneyar (Ilamparithy), nominally in the political wing, was the chief man dealing with them, Bosco was the man behind the scenes dealing in intelligence matters. According to a Catholic activist, Bosco was a student at a seminary. An apocryphal story about Bosco is that his supervisor Fr. Bosco detested the LTTE and was a strict disciplinarian. The story goes that Bosco dropped out and was wont to swear that he would put a bullet into Fr. Bosco’s head – hence his nickname Bosco.

Bosco

A staff member who was active in the university students union in the early 1990s said that LTTE cadres who used to come to the University at the time named Bosco as the killer. He also had a vague idea (proved wrong) that Bosco was killed when the SL Army ambushed a group of intelligence cadres near Pandivirichchan in the Mannar District in the early 1990s.

A priest we contacted said immediately that he had been to Bosco’s office in 1991 or 1992 to inquire about the student Manoharan (whose abduction we deal with in Chapter 5). His office was in a lane taking off from near the railway crossing on Stanley Rd., near a bend, leading to a point near Hindu Ladies’ College. The first time Bosco refused to meet the priest. The second time Bosco met him but never looked him in the face and seemed shy to face him. In manner and appearance, Bosco did not strike him as typical of the ruthless intelligence wing. The priest said that Bosco who stayed at Arul Ashram on Temple Rd. and attended St. Patrick’s College, later joined the LTTE and became a high-ranking intelligence cadre under Pottu Amman, aided besides other things by his knowledge of English.

In response to our queries, the priest, with wide-ranging contacts with persons who had an evangelical orientation both inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church, soon made contact with a youth in his early 30s, who had known Bosco well and had been 11-years-old when Rajani was killed. The youth, who was reluctant to talk to us directly, related to the priest his story of the events after Rajani’s murder.

As a young boy, and native of Ariyalai, the youth went in the evenings to Bharathy Sana Samuha Nilayam (Bharathy Community Centre), a short distance from Kandy Rd., at Pungamkulam Junction. It was the rendezvous for several cadres from the LTTE. This boy admired them and they let him examine the weapons they carried. Owing to his being a mere boy, they took no notice of him when they talked.

In the immediate aftermath of Rajani’s killing, these cadres had an evening rendezvous at Bharathy CC. Present were Bosco from the Intelligence Wing, Navaneethan from the Military Wing and a person named Peter. The youth has a vivid memory of the conversation that ensued:

Bosco announced jubilantly in reference to Rajani: “Avavai anuppiyachchu” (She has been dispatched) and added: “Ava ennai aen chudurai? Enru chingam mathiri ketta.” (She looked at me like a lioness, and asked, why are you shooting me?)

(Here Bosco had evidently translated into Tamil, what the guest housekeeper Asi had heard Rajani shout in English.)

Navaneethan said in response: “Vayukullai vachchirukkavenum” (“You should have put her in the mouth”). The company was exultant. Navaneethan, the witness learnt, is presently settled in Britain. Peter, according to the same witness, was responsible for shooting dead St. John’s College principal Edwin Anandarajah in June 1985, and is now dead.[2] Kapil Amman, LTTE’s deputy intelligence chief who came to the Centre gave Rajani’s criticism and her influence overseas as the reason for killing her.

Bosco then had his base in a furnished room in a house in Arulampalam Lane near Tappalkattai Santhi (Post Box Junction), further east on Kandy Rd. Bosco was also an avid reader of Naan (Me), the journal on psychology published by the Oblate Fathers (Oblates of Mary Immaculate), a connection that probably goes back to Bosco’s residence at Arul Ashram, Jaffna, while attending St. Patrick’s College. The witness[3] also said that a medical student named Sutha from Killinochchi was a regular visitor to Bosco’s room near Post Box Junction, where he had met him. They both studied and exchanged books on psychology.  Bosco never took any vows. In 1996, after the Jaffna Exodus, the youth met Bosco at Murugamalai, Kilali, along with his wife, a lady from Sillalai, whom the priest cited earlier knew. Not long afterwards in the latter 1990s, Bosco, according to this and other sources, died reportedly of brain tumour.

Rajani Murder and the Killing of University Security Officers Felix and Thevathas

 The nervousness the LTTE felt about being identified as the killer, is revealed in the murder of two university security officers. One of them, Felix Anthony (37), was abducted by the LTTE. The employees’ union made no formal complaint to the authorities. It was earlier rumoured that Felix would be released after the commemorative events concerning Rajani. According to a near relative, the LTTE played a recording of Felix naming them as Rajani’s killers. As part of its ongoing decimation of Jaffna society, the LTTE set up colleagues to betray one another.

We learnt through security sources at the University that on 27^th September, six days after Rajani was killed, the LTTE shot dead Felix and another security officer Thevathas (39) on the beach south of Jaffna Town. A further pointer to how closely the LTTE had been monitoring the University is the murder the previous year in Kondavil of the security officer Tharmalingam, whom it identified as sympathetic to the EPRLF.

Being in the university precincts, security officers would have obtained detailed knowledge of Rajani’s killing. One of those who monitored the security officers has been identified by employees as the same security officer who signalled the killers as Rajani left the Faculty. He was noted for carrying audio-visual recording devices while spying for whichever power then in control, and this made him feared. He is reportedly now a broken man. To this day, security officers tend to be evasive about Rajani’s killing.

3.3 After the Murder: The Fallout and Elaborate Cover-Ups

On the morning after the murder, Sumi Kailasapathy, a student council member who was greatly disturbed by the event, went to the council office and asked, who would have done this? Arunothayan, a full-time LTTE spy who flunked all his exams, launched into a defensive tirade. Sumi heard him out and pointed out that she had not made an accusation but was puzzled like everyone else. The student council drafted a statement in which Rajani’s killers were described as fascists. Arunothayan objected and asked why they used such strong language. The others pointed out that they had used language just as strong when Indian Army firing on student protestors earlier in February killed two students and he had not demurred.

On the 22^nd of September, the day after the killing, Rajani’s coffin was brought in procession to the Medical Faculty for members to pay their respects. Hardly any of Rajani’s faculty colleagues were present. Neither had any one of the several of whom, who lived nearby, visited her home by the morning after the killing to inquire after the children. Among the few exceptions were Prof. and Mrs. Saravanapavanandan who also joined the protest demonstration on 2^nd October. As for the others, the only charitable explanation is that they knew and were scared.

The same morning, a former student of the university and member of the militant group EROS joined the queue of mourners filing past the coffin. He knew Rajani’s father Rajasingam Master well, and had just arrived from the Vanni. While in the queue, he spontaneously gave vent to anger and exasperation at the killing. A medical student from Valvettithurai came up and cautioned him not to be expressive, since those who killed Rajani were taking a video recording. He added that the killers had come from nearby where he buys his food. The former student who bought his meals from a house in Potpathy Rd. used to meet other students there, including the medical student who cautioned him. The video was being taken by the LTTE. Thus on the first day itself there were whispered indications that a section of the killers had come from Potpathy Road, which is easily accessible through Konavalai Lane just opposite the Medical Faculty.

A former PLOTE source from Kokkuvil told us that a colleague of his who stayed near Potpathy Road told him that two persons brought in for the murder had stayed the previous night in the room shared by Dharmendra and L. He said that L angered many colleagues by using former PLOTE connections to find sleeping places for LTTE cadres.

The Indian Army was stationed in the house west of Rajani’s parental home in Navalar Rd. On the evening that she was killed, the officer next door to the Rajasingams, from North-East of India whose name Rajani’s sister Sumathy remembers as Thapa, called over to commiserate. He was very upset thinking it was either the EPRLF or the Army, adding there was so much indiscipline. As the IPKF had decided to pull out, relations in general were more relaxed. The body had not yet been brought to the house. The following day another officer Manjit Singh, younger to the brigadier, who had earlier been next door, came to pay his respects. A number of other Indian officers and men too paid their respects at Rajani’s parental home.

Rajani’s funeral was on the 23^rd of September. At the close of her burial service on a wet and cloudy evening in St. James’ cemetery, Nallur, shadows were falling swiftly as mourners filed past. The rainy season just set in. The grave looking Mallakam Magistrate, Mr. Gunaratnam, called me aside. He was concerned that many people were still blaming the Indian Army. He said, “Political considerations aside, I must tell you that this has all the hallmarks of the LTTE. It is what people call a ‘clean job’. There was no clumsiness. All the bullets found their mark. This is the conclusion I can make based on the many inquests I have been called upon to perform.”

3.4 Don Arasu, Student L and Monitoring the Fallout

 There was one question which LTTE spies were asking people soon after the killing, “Who do you think killed Rajani?” The LTTE would have been quick to blame the Indian Army or a rival group if there had been a groundswell of opinion to support it.

Since several rumours blamed the EPRLF for Rajani’s murder, they were the first to issue a statement accusing the LTTE and naming a Senkathir as the killer. The LTTE said absolutely nothing until Rajani’s commemoration, two months later on 22^nd November. But they were watching everything very closely and taking video recordings.

LTTE spies were about trying to find out what people in general and those close to Rajani in particular thought of the killing. Hence Arasu’s visit to the journalist AJ Canagaratna, and the actions of Arunothayan and L. When the coffin was moved to the main university hall from the Medical Faculty, the day after the murder, Arunothayan sent a student to ask Dr. Sritharan who killed Rajani. Sritharan told him openly, “Ask Arunothayan who sent you. He knows best.” The LTTE held off making a public statement as growing opinion blamed the LTTE for what the people widely acknowledged was an irreplaceable loss. We at the University deliberately avoided blaming anyone. (When the LTTE issued a denial two months later, it was more a threat to those who held otherwise.)

The LTTE’s silence was palpable. It was soon clear to us that the killing had been planned so as to implicate the Indian Army or one of its allies. This part of the plan had gone awry from the start. Many of the students and people of the locality had their suspicions confirmed from the start by the LTTE’s nervousness and began pointing their finger at it.

 The person we refer to as Arasu had been a humanities don in the University, and an LTTE supporter. He distanced himself from the LTTE after Prabhakaran had Sundaram of PLOTE killed in January 1982. Arasu about 1985 published a book on Indian regionalism and the danger it posed to the Tamil struggle. Contemporaries who participated in discussions around the university at that time, said that H.N. Fernando of the Ceylon Teachers’ Union was the main inspiration behind the ideas in Arasu’s book, derived in turn from discussions around the 1971 JVP uprising. Wanted by the Jayewardene government (which cynically accused Left parties of the July 1983 violence), H.N. Fernando, who was then in poor health, took refuge with friends in Jaffna where Arasu met him. These contemporaries said that Mahattaya was influenced by Arasu’s book. Sometime after the LTTE eliminated other groups in 1986, Arasu threw in his lot with it once more and was in hiding away from Jaffna after the Indian Army came into control. It is these circumstances that explain the university don Arasu’s visit to A.J. Canagaratna, a close friend of Rajani and her family, who remained in Jaffna. He was a rare, independent intellectual, who died in Colombo in 2006.

On the 23^rd, the day of Rajani’s funeral, Arasu visited A.J. Canagaratna, who resided with Kugamoorthy (see Ch.4), escorted by two boys whom A.J. took to be LTTE cadres. Arasu feigned surprise when told by A.J. of Rajani’s assassination. Arasu claimed that he was in Jaffna to attend to a dispute between his parents and their landlord. The nature and fortuitous manner of Arasu’s visit left a strong impression that he had been sent to monitor the fallout from the murder. A.J. was part of Rajani’s circle and he would have been the right person who knew what people in her circle thought. A.J. observed that Arasu was not comfortable during the visit.

According to information we received at that time, Arasu was brought in a car from Pungudutivu attired as a bridegroom going for his nuptials. He would have needed such a strong disguise as he would have been easily recognised at checkpoints by rival militant groups. His knowledge of the University and literati in Jaffna would have inevitably led the LTTE to seek information from him. This is not to say he was happy about this role, but having come thus far he was trapped, unless he wished to surrender.

L was Dharmendra’s roommate. They had been classmates in Vavuniya and L had joined the PLOTE. The LTTE banned PLOTE in 1986. Promising him safety, Dharmendra took L under his wing and used him as a tool for intelligence work, taking advantage of his former PLOTE contacts. L spread a story soon after Rajani’s murder, that Dharmendra saw a person running south through the Medical Faculty towards Jaffna Town. This was contrary to accounts of the northward flight of those brought in to secure the area for the killing. Dharmendra, who jealously guarded the Medical Faculty as an LTTE base, was unlikely to treat a breach of security so lightly. Many concluded that Dharmendra used L to lay a false trail.

L made himself scarce shortly after Rajani’s assassination. A number of persons in his neighbourhood were convinced that he was compromised in the assassination. Saratha, a young woman whom Rajani had helped, said of this youth, “I always told Amma (Rajani) to be careful of L, but Amma thought he was a PLOTE boy and did not take me seriously. See what has become of her?” He later told another youth in the neighbourhood cryptically that he had broken all connections and was out of the LTTE.

In early 1990, L sought a meeting with Dr. Sritharan of the UTHR (J). They met in Colombo in March 1990 and L wished to meet the Vice Chancellor Prof. Thurairajah. The three met at the Open University, Colombo. Thurairajah casually said that he had met the UGC Chairman Prof. Arjuna Aluvihare who communicated what Vasudeva Nanayakkara MP, member of the Parliamentary Select Committee dealing with the NLMC, had told him. The Committee had received two letters from the Jaffna Medical Students’ Union, the first endorsing the incorporation of the NLMC into Eastern University and the second opposing it. On Sritharan pointing out to Thurairajah that L was the Union president, L reluctantly admitted that he had signed the first letter without calling a committee meeting. The second, he confessed, came from the committee signed by the vice president (Mr. Rajaratnam). L claimed that he had signed the first under duress when asked to do so by the Dean of the Faculty, Prof. Balasubramaniam, whom he added, cried profusely when Rajani was killed.

Rajani had been a lone voice opposing the incorporation of the NLMC. We see no direct connection between the NLMC issue and Rajani’s murder. However, L’s duplicity and an influential section of the Faculty being compromised with the LTTE over the NLMC, exemplify the murky environment that made Rajani’s peril greater, and her death convenient.

Later, alone with L, Sritharan related the evidence he had of L’s complicity in Rajani’s murder. Sritharan said he knew L was minding a fleet of auto rickshaws, which the LTTE used to transport weapons, at a house in Kokkuvil. Sri asked why at Dharmendra’s bidding he spread the false story of a man seen running through the Medical Faculty soon after the shooting? L admitted that he did thus to protect his life as a former member of the banned PLOTE. While denying any inside knowledge of the assassination, L offered to find out. Sri told him that he believed in being straight with students and if he did not know, he did not want him to nose around. But if he told him the truth, he would do his best to help him to go abroad.

L told Sritharan that he feared returning to Jaffna because of Dharmendra, his former classmate in Vavuniya. After the LTTE banned the PLOTE, L had kept away from studies for two years. Dharmendra brought him back as his roommate and used him. Later when Dharmendra felt that his family in Vavuniya was threatened by the Indian Army and allies, he asked L to negotiate his surrender to the EPRLF, but changed his mind. Dharmendra evidently feared that L might let slip his contemplated treachery.

Sritharan asked L if he met former assistant lecturer Arasu who was sent to inquire around after the killing. L answered in the affirmative. Arasu, he said, was staying with an LTTE supporter Tharan in Punnalaikkadduvan.[4] L added that were the LTTE responsible for Rajani’s assassination, Arasu would have known; Tharan had told him that the LTTE consulted Arasu on all killings in Jaffna, and it was he who instigated the killing of former DDC chairman and TULF stalwart Proctor Nadarajah in 1988. L said LTTE members interested in the incorporation of NLMC had said at the Faculty that those opposing it would be dealt with severely.

While Arasu’s colleagues knew that his vanity and sense of intellectual superiority enabled the LTTE to make a tool of him, his actual importance within it was open to question. During the latter phase in 2009, he was among those who wanted the LTTE to negotiate an end to the carnage, but to no effect. While the LTTE would have consulted many about killing Rajani, we must not assume unanimity among LTTE advisors.

Arasu continued writing for the Tamil newspapers in the early 1990s and moved to the Vanni during the 1995 Exodus and married sometime in the 1990s. Given his spurts of independence and criticism of the LTTE’s cavalier approach to diplomacy, it would have found him a difficult man to deal with. Some of his batch mates said that Arasu completely broke with the LTTE about 2001 and became an English teacher in the Vanni.

3.5 Operation Fall-Out and those involved

The killing of Rajani was an elaborate operation which mobilised considerable institutional resources to handle the fallout and marks its divergence from the Rajiv Gandhi’s. In the latter the main problem was access to the victim. There was little prospect of shifting the blame. In Rajani’s case access was easy. She was constantly out alone on her bicycle. The difficulty was controlling the fallout. The LTTE’s dilemma was the political cost within the community, hence the very involved plan to shift the blame and the rush to carry it out before the Indian Army’s withdrawal.

If we look at what the planning of the murder and monitoring of the fall-out necessitated, it becomes clear who was involved in the killing. As we argued earlier, the political cost was a deterring factor and whoever wanted Rajani killed had to make a case and show that a cover up was feasible. The heated argument Rajani had with two Indian officers, about which Sooriyakumar and Dharmendra inquired as though concerned for her, rendered the task feasible. The planning of the murder required considerable inside information from within the Medical Faculty. The Anatomy examination had been delayed and Rajani was expected back to conduct it. Rajani arrived on 6^th September, fifteen days before her murder, and the Indian officers visited her about a week later.

Shortly after her arrival, Rajani wrote to the Vice Chancellor Prof. Thurairajah to inform him of her return, saying, “There is no life for me apart from my people”. Prof. Thurairajah was once moved to remark that Rajani was the only man in the Medical Faculty. Many of the medical students who supported or were members of the LTTE, were also fond of Rajani. If they sensed that the LTTE had killed her, and spontaneously protested, the result would have been very embarrassing for the LTTE.

Pushpakumar was a third-year medical student whom Rajani had helped. He was a member of the LTTE and the Indian Army had asked him to come for questioning. Rajani kept him at home and told him not to go, and if asked, to say that she as his student counsellor had told him not to go because they tortured those being interrogated. The matter blew over. In the early aftermath of the murder of Rajani, Pushpakumar was apparently not aware who killed her. After the initial commemoration meetings he was found crying in the lobby of the Medical Faculty moaning that they had not done enough for ‘Madam’. As days wore on his colleagues felt that the whip had been cracked and he had received orders to spy on them.

Most LTTE supporters in the Faculty, it appears, were in the dark about plans to kill Rajani. The task of those who knew was to manage the fallout. The evidence we have collected above indicates that besides the security guard (see above), Sooriyakumar, Dharmendra and possibly L, knew.

Sooriyakumar and Dharmendra had authority over the students by virtue of being in the LTTE and through their dummy Medical Students’ Union president, L. They were on the spot spreading disinformation. Among students who knew the truth, protest and display of emotion were muted. Circumstantial evidence strongly points to Sooriyakumar and Dharmendra, the most prominent LTTE insiders, as accessories to the murder.

The 1995 Exodus resulted from the LTTE’s order on the 30^th of October 1995, for the entire Jaffna populace to move to the Vanni in the wake of the army offensive to take the peninsula.[5] It was crucial for its plan that the Jaffna Hospital staff should be importuned or threatened to close the Hospital. Here the LTTE met resistance. On 12^th November 1995, LTTE political wing leader Tamilchelvan came to the Hospital and tried to bully the doctors to shut down. Some doctors resisted. Dharmendra was by then an intern at Jaffna Hospital. As a student, Dharmendra had been in the same clinical group as another intern whom we will call Wenceslas. Wenceslas, who was an active Christian, had engaged Dharmendra and discussed the nature of the LTTE with him. Wenceslas says that the discussions had some impact, as Dharmendra had come to the position that the use of violence was wrong, although he generally avoided sensitive topics such as Rajani’s murder. However, Dharmendra once admitted that killing Rajani was one of the failures of the LTTE. Perhaps Dharmendra remembered what Rajani told him many times, “You are still young and have strong ideas about your cause. You feel justified in killing those you deem traitors. As you mature your ideas will change. Perhaps you will feel equally convinced that your former beliefs which drove you to kill are wrong. By then it would be too late and valuable lives would have been lost.”

Wenceslas said that Dharmendra had been very close to Mahattaya and for this reason was among those sidelined once the LTTE moved against Mahattaya and his supporters, moves which climaxed in the spring of 1993. The internal power struggle acted as a catalyst in Dharmendra’s distancing himself from the LTTE’s positions, with which he could not have been in total agreement anyway. Had Mahattaya been a protagonist in murdering Rajani, it would explain Dharmendra’s involvement in the spadework under orders. If Mahattaya had not been involved, Dharmendra would have had a little more leeway, but may not have been strong enough to distance himself from an action he was evidently uncomfortable with. By the time of the Jaffna Hospital crisis in November 1995, Dharmendra, although still a member of the LTTE, was just hanging on. Wenceslas said that having been associated with the organisation for so long, he felt trapped, and was waiting for an opportunity to leave. After the meeting with Tamilchelvan where Wenceslas had objected to closing the Hospital, Dharmendra told Wenceslas confidentially that he was marked. Wenceslas was surprised because Tamilchelvan had smiled through the entire meeting. Dharmendra’s confidence, he felt, was intended as a friendly warning.

These and other indications led some of the doctors to feel that if they continued to refuse the LTTE’s offers of exit visas for their families and tried to keep the Hospital open, even as the International Committee of the Red Cross faltered, M. Ganesharatnam, Daya Somasundaram and Noel Somasundaram, doctors who were most vocal on keeping the Hospital open, would have suffered Rajani’s fate. The third would have been the most vulnerable as a junior medic. It adds a further element of gravity to the ICRC’s conduct in allowing itself to panic instead of backing the medical staff who wanted to keep the Hospital open.[6]

Through the grapevine of batchmates and contemporaries from the University of Jaffna, several doctors gathered that the LTTE sensed there were difficult times ahead, once it was pressurised to enter the Norway-brokered peace process in 2002. In preparation, it commenced sending abroad several professionals in its ranks, to strengthen itself in the West. This appears to be the context of Sooriyakumar’s move to Britain by the end of 2003[7] and subsequently Dharmendra’s opportunity to move out.

Sooriyakumar’s brother was Newton, a key operative in the LTTE’s Intelligence Wing. After the LTTE took over Jaffna in the early 1990s, it appointed Sooriyakumar Shadow Controller of Jaffna District Health Services. He subsequently served the LTTE as a surgeon. Sooriyakumar appears to have visited Colombo around 2005 to inquire about Newton, who was abducted in the South during the rising spate of tit for tat incidents at that time, even as the peace process was formally on. We last heard that Sooriyakumar was with the National Health Service in the UK.

Dharmendra got into the news when he accompanied Sea Tiger Leader Soosai to Singapore for medical treatment during the peace process of 2002. He left the LTTE before the last few months of the war, and is rumoured to have left the country as a UN volunteer doctor.

We have no evidence that L’s predecessor as Medical Students’ Union president, who was an active LTTE front man in 1987, had any role in the killing. His elite background, St. Anthony’s, Trinity and St. John’s, places him among the types for whom the LTTE was a means to power. Their sort would have distanced themselves once it ceased to suit their ambitions. In 1987, as a leading member of the LTTE’s network in the University, he was involved in the arrest of Gamini Navaratne, and demanded that the Jaffna Hospital stay put in the face of an impending assault by the Sri Lankan Army. The LTTE found him useful at that time and he too was ingratiating himself into the LTTE’s confidence without being in its inner councils. He too avoided Rajani when she wanted to discuss his ideas.

3.6 Shadow War and Commemoration

By the time the funeral was over on the 23^rd evening, there was no doubt in our minds that the LTTE was responsible for Rajani’s murder. Many of our friends abroad who had their ears close to the ground were disappointed that we left matters open rather than name the LTTE publicly. Right or wrong, it was then a matter of tactical judgment.

Firstly, political developments in the South were against us. The United National Party government under Premadasa was assisting the LTTE to gain control of the North-East. Locally, more and more people were coming to know that the LTTE were Rajani’s killers. Our strategy was to raise the issue at an international level, particularly by appealing to those overseas sympathetic to Rajani’s work. Apart from the UTHR(J), a large number of students, the Science Students’ Union, the Medical Students’ Union and the Science Teachers’ Association supported this course of action. Our immediate goals were a protest march and then a commemoration inviting international visitors. In this adverse political environment, to accuse the LTTE would have been to scare away people from participation and place an enormous strain on the students. We thought it best to allow the truth to come out in the process.

The LTTE neither admitted nor denied the killing and was aware that nearly everyone else soon came to know they did it. Our preparations became a shadow war. The LTTE had no ground for confronting us, and they were becoming nervous as people with no direct connections to the University increasingly blamed them. An elderly lady from Vadamarathchi, an education officer, told us firmly, “It is the LTTE”, as though we were slow on the uptake. Thus was the talk in the tea stalls and bicycle shops.

We had preliminary commemoration meetings in the University on 2^nd October and at two schools, Chundikuli Girls’ College on the 4^th and Jaffna College on the 6^th, where Rajani had studied. The protest march on 2^nd October was led by Vice Chancellor Prof. A. Thurairajah and Dean of Arts Prof. N. Balakrishnan. Only Prof. and Mrs. Saravanapavanandan among Rajani’s medical colleagues participated. The first commemoration meeting followed the march, where Thurairajah proudly read out from Rajani’s last letter sent to him upon her return from Britain about two weeks before she was killed: “There is no life for me apart from my people.”

As the weeks wore on towards the commemoration involving participants from abroad and other parts of the country fixed for 22^nd November 1989, Prof. Thurairajah asked us one day ‘was it the LTTE that killed Rajani’? Sritharan replied, “Why, didn’t you know that?”  Thurairajah said that he had thought otherwise. But later in Colombo, British High Commissioner David Gladstone asked him the identity of Rajani’s killer. Thurairajah said that he did not know. Gladstone told him he had authentic evidence that it was the LTTE. Thurairajah was dumbfounded. Gladstone was an ambassador out of the ordinary who kept his ears close to the ground by personally cultivating a variety of contacts.

Sritharan had earlier explained to Thurairajah the circumstances of the murder clearly and Thurairajah had listened, but the explanation had gone completely over his head.

From that time onwards, Thurairajah was a cautious participant in the commemoration proceedings, but never discouraged us. He continued to do what we requested from him as chairman of the commemoration committee. We could also feel the staff becoming frightened. But the student unions stood firm.

By the evening of 19^th November 1989, the southern delegates for the commemoration had arrived in Jaffna and were hosted for dinner at Rajani’s parents’ home. The fact that the Medical Students’ Union president L was absconding was a sign of the LTTE’s hostility. Its vice president Rajaratnam and Chooty Kulasingam, the president of the Science Students’ Union, took on the brunt of organisation at considerable risk. Late evening on the 19^th, while the Southern delegates were at Rajani’s parents’ home, the two of them came with sombre faces and reported that while they were drawing up the slogans for the march, an impressive collection of LTTE area leaders came to them and wanted them to carry slogans provoking the Indian Army by demanding their exit.

Every time the student leaders tried to explain why they cannot do this the LTTE men got angrier. Sritharan advised them to keep talking to the LTTE and felt certain that they would not dare to stop the commemoration. It became nevertheless a war of nerves.

The two-day commemoration began with seminars at the University on the 20^th morning, when several of the foreign delegates too joined us. During the last seminar in the afternoon, a crisis arose when a group of LTTEers under the leadership of Tamilchelvan, then known as Dinesh, came to the student union room where slogans were being prepared for the next day’s march and tried to divert the purpose of the march into one against India. In effect they were trying to stop it. Rumours were already being spread that the march was off.

Sritharan too joined the students and asked the LTTEers if they knew the history of the struggle and how the LTTE had played a major role in giving India a foothold in Lanka? He said, now that we have to live with it, we need to deal with India carefully and not brashly. He challenged them on their implacable enmity towards other groups who too took up arms for the same cause. The LTTE men responded that the PLOTE had been a complete disgrace by acting as mercenaries in the Maldives. Rajaratnam, the vice president of the Medical Students’ Union, immediately questioned them on the LTTE’s no less disgraceful role in drugs running. The LTTEers quickly denied it. Sritharan asked them if they knew why their offices in Paris were raided by the French Police and offered to give them further details. This was a rare occasion the LTTE was forced into a political engagement and did not quite know how to cope with it.

While these arguments were going on, Sritharan came to the Kailasapathy Auditorium and in a move to scotch rumours that the march was off, told this writer to announce at the end of the last seminar the time and route of the march. As Sritharan predicted the LTTE withdrew. Adding to the drama, Colonel Sashikumar commanding the Gurkha battalion at Kondavil, told Prof. Thurairajah that they had information that the LTTE were against the march and that the Indian Army would duly provide an escort.

The highlight on the second day, 21^st November 1989, was the peace march through Jaffna Town, led by distinguished foreign guests who had all known Rajani: Martin Ennals, former secretary general of Amnesty International; Abdul Rahman Babu, former minister of the Tanzanian government and later its political prisoner; and Liz Phillipson, political assistant to British Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn. The slogans demanded an end to political killings and an end to the virtual conscription of children by all parties. The LTTE’s threatening behavior and attempts to censor slogans and substitute its own were firmly resisted by the students.

Prof. Thurairajah kept away from the peace march, but chaired the main commemoration meeting in Kailasapathy Auditorium on the second day. Among those who attended were activists from the South and colleagues from Eastern University. Rajaratnam, the vice president of the Medical Students’ Union, spoke boldly about the tragedy facing our youth who, ignorant of the issues involved, were being armed to serve rival factions and all they were left with finally was a thirst for vengeance. Mohamed Abdul Rahuman Babu said at the commemoration meeting:

“Rajani has not died in vain, because her exemplary work will have influenced thousands and thousands of future generations. I was so touched yesterday in Jaffna, when we marched from the University through the streets of Jaffna, to see the emotions of the people who were watching, and the great terror. We could see they were terrified because there were guns everywhere, seen and unseen guns, but you could see also that their hearts were with the object of our march.”

For two days we all enjoyed a respite from fear and the atmosphere was very free, even though the LTTE watched and openly filmed the proceedings. We had letters from members of the public expressing their appreciation of the peace march and their tremendous joy and relief at seeing the spirit of freedom still aflame in Jaffna despite the loss of Rajani.

It was at the commemoration that the LTTE, after long deliberation, felt compelled to issue a statement it distributed to the participants, denying they had nothing to do with Rajani’s murder. The statement in Tamil, which began with formula rhetoric about liberation, switched tone severely warning all ‘traitors’ who ostensibly darkened the LTTE’s good name.

As time wore on it became clear that the LTTE had not only been meticulous in execution of the murder, but also monitored and documented allied developments. After Rajani’s commemoration, an old and friendly Jaffna milkman conveyed his excitement at having seen me in a video. He innocently explained that his nephew who was in LTTE Intelligence, played the video recordings of the commemoration at his home.

3.7 Medical Faculty: Riddance of a Painful Memory

Weeks after Rajani’s killing, the Medical Students’ Union and Medical Faculty employees submitted to their faculty board a proposal to name the new faculty auditorium after Rajani. They advanced the necessity of a strong gesture of solidarity with the deceased colleague who had sacrificed so much; whence just when the Faculty was finding it hard to attract staff with advanced training abroad, a conscientious trained young person had come back at a difficult time and was brutally killed; it therefore places on the colleagues a strong need and obligation to demonstrate their indignation by giving such sacrifice the honour due.

Instead the Faculty and Senate ignored Rajani and proposed other names for the honour – the very names of persons toward whom there had, until then, been hostility, indifference or skepticism. In short persons who were regarded unworthy of the honour. A faculty committee decided instead that in view of Rajani’s services to Anatomy, the ground floor corridor, rooms and the laboratory used for teaching Anatomy, known as the Anatomy Block, would be named after Rajani. The Professor of Chemistry told the Senate that a line must be drawn somewhere, as otherwise they might start dedicating single rooms in honour of individuals.

Mathematics Professor Tharmaratnam disagreed with Rajani politically. He felt that the militant phenomenon was called forth by the cowardice and moral bankruptcy of the establishment, and the corruption of the militants was more restrained than that of their older peers, who respected only the gun; and had these older, especially academic, peers vicarious access to guns, they would certainly have gone berserk in dealing with their perceived enemies. It was the failings of his generation that he felt most keenly. It was a point of disagreement with Rajani; who while critical of the sins of the older generation that had become a spent force, went further in insisting that the militant leadership should be actively challenged and should not be ignored. Tharmaratnam had a long history of contesting abuse, especially in the university system, and suffered for it. He had a deep respect for Rajani. Speaking at the first commemoration meeting on 2^nd October 1989 at the University’s Kailasapathy Auditorium, he said, “Rajani not only believed in academic freedom, she practised it.” He also participated in the commemoration meeting at Jaffna College on 6^th October, where both he and Rajani had studied.

Having listened to what passed in the Senate, Prof. Tharmaratnam remarked that he was puzzled by Rajani’s colleagues’ attitude to her and remarked that even self-interest and self-preservation demanded that they formally value her. This clarifies what we had encountered in the disputes over the NLMC and the constant challenges Rajani posed to authoritarianism. An influential section of the staff harboured hostility towards Rajani deep down, which alone explains their hardened attitude to all efforts to commemorate her.[8] This suggests that it was not fear of the LTTE alone that underlay her faculty colleagues’ indifference towards observances after her death and the commemoration.

3.8 More repression in 1990 – an attack on the incipient democratic awakening

The commemoration and protest made a mark, which the LTTE found difficult to erase. Optimistically, we thought we could stay on and continue as before. But we had to contend with the politics of the South with its readiness to sell everyone else and themselves into the bargain. First they appeased the LTTE and helped them to stuff their prisons to bursting point. Then when the LTTE provoked war in June 1990, as known in advance to those with a rudimentary understanding of the LTTE, the Government thrashed Tamil civilians with such vindictive fury that the feeble flame of Tamil dissent too was all but extinguished.

In January 1990, a group of medical students approached Sritharan and identified themselves as LTTE supporters. They said Dharmendra had encouraged them to participate in the commemoration peace march and they had felt reassured that the LTTE had not killed Rajani. But now they had some doubts. They asked if they could arrange a meeting between Sritharan and the LTTE to thrash these out. Sritharan told them that it was the LTTE who killed Rajani and no purpose was served by such a meeting.

In April 1991 when the war was in full swing, some LTTE recruiters went to a tutory in front of St. James’ Church on Hospital Road, Jaffna. The school children started asking questions. One was why they had killed Rajani. Taken off guard, the recruiters responded, “That was a top-level decision. We will make a statement at the appropriate time.” Next came the question, why they killed St. John’s College principal, Mr. C.E. Anandarajah. The session broke up in commotion.

At Jaffna University itself a number of students continued to act with independence in the face of a slow exodus of staff and students. Section 5.2 of our Report No.8 under Crackdown in the University of Jaffna describes continuing resistance by students following the LTTE’s arrest of several students from May 1991. The LTTE summoned a meeting under false pretences and put on stage a senior lecturer in Tamil and former senior student counsellor to address them. The lecturer told them, “There are still weeds left in the University. They will not be tolerated. These weeds must be plucked up and cast away.” He went on to call the detained students traitors in which category he included also the Muslims. This senior don E. Balasundaram who undertook this performance to curry favour with the LTTE, also had the privilege of leaving the University in 1994 and is now in Canada, where he is president of the Swami Vipulananda Arts Society.

Having gone deeper into the killing of Rajani, one is left with a feeling of anti-climax. Recollecting the feeling evoked by the event and the commemorative speeches made, we generally had a picture of the killer as a menacing demon. But Bosco does not present such an image. He comes across simply as one of the muddle-headed cogs in the killing machine. Some were local rowdies given an undue sense of importance by the gun. Many others were ordinary men, several of whom had close kin in other groups, who hid their doubts or guilty secrets behind the fiery, hate-filled rhetoric deifying Prabhakaran and Eelam. To show any sign of doubt before fellow sycophants might have proved fatal.

Years later, a refugee claimant seeking professional advice in Britain told Rajani’s elder sister Nirmala that he had been employed at the LTTE intelligence HQ and had dealt with files. From a file he handled he gathered that the LTTE had killed Rajani and there was also mention of The Broken Palmyra. In Chapter 4, we will briefly discuss who ordered the killing, before moving on in Chapter 5 to talk about the spirit that Rajani and students such as Chelvi and Manoharan nurtured at the university.

3.9 End Note: Links to the Untold Story of the Muslim Quarter

Recently, we received more corroboration of internal reservations in the LTTE on killing Rajani from Jaffna Muslims who returned to Jaffna twenty years after their expulsion by the LTTE at the end of October 1990.

The growth of Tamil militancy created some dilemmas for the Muslims. They basically had no problem with Tamil self-determination and were ready to fit into it as a minority within a minority. But they told LTTE’s Kittu, who was among the first to try to establish a base in the Muslim area, that they cannot support violence and the LTTE should not seek to establish camps in their area. They had compatriots living in all parts of the island, and they should not suffer the kind of violence the Tamils suffered on the pretext that Jaffna Muslims supported the militants. They said they were ready to help them in any way not involving arms or military supplies.

The result was that the Muslim area in Jaffna had some resemblance to the formal neutrality enjoyed by Sweden and Switzerland during the Second World War. During difficult times the Muslims were able to provide services in communications and transportation of civilian necessities. When Jaffna was cut off soon after the LTTE’s war with the Indian Army, a communication centre was opened in the Muslim area that was used by all.

When parliamentary elections were called in early 1989, the EROS group, backed by the LTTE, sought and received cash from the Muslims to contest the elections. In turn the EROS group placed Mr. Aziz from the Muslim community in Jaffna on their national list. The group obtained 13 seats in the North-East. With the permission of the Jaffna Muslim leaders, the national list seat promised to them was given to Basheer Segu Dawood of the EROS in the East. President Premadasa was anxious to talk to the EROS MPs. Jaffna Muslim leaders coordinated the transportation of Jaffna EROS MPs and facilitated their talks with Premadasa. One of EROS’s demands was the release ostensibly of their political prisoners in a list of around 63, where the majority comprised LTTE detainees. For this purpose, special release forms were printed omitting reference to the Sixth Amendment, which barred those released from advocating separatism.

Soon afterwards, the LTTE wanted to do the talking themselves and thus began the LTTE–Premadasa talks. However, when the LTTE resumed war with the Premadasa government in June 1990, the contacts of the Jaffna Muslims in Colombo, which were once useful to the LTTE, became a source of suspicion. The case was similar to that of Hill Country Tamils in the Vanni. Their knowledge of Sinhalese and their contacts had till then proved useful to the LTTE. Three years after the expulsion of the Muslims in 1990, there was widespread talk that the LTTE was contemplating the expulsion of Hill Country Tamils as well.

Earlier we mentioned the shooting of the medical student Prabhakaran a few weeks before Rajani’s assassination. He was warded in the Jaffna Hospital’s ICU. His family sought help from a Muslim businessman, who used his connections and had him airlifted to Colombo Hospital. He was recuperating at the Muslim businessman’s house when Rajani was shot dead. A few days later two other Jaffna medical students from the LTTE, Seermaran and Ravi, came to the businessman’s house in the morning to meet Prabha. A topic that arose was the killing of Rajani.

The two who had come from Jaffna blamed the EPRLF. The businessman who was on his way out of the house knew the truth from his Jaffna associations. He paused and told the students, “Don’t talk nonsense, it was the LTTE that shot her.” They were fond of Rajani as a teacher, and were dumbfounded by this revelation. They no doubt checked back to clear their minds. The LTTE had hoped to blame groups close to the Indian Army and had planned the killing meticulously. But they received a rude jolt on finding that the truth was quite widely known. Besides Muslims there were also Tamils who knew and decided to be silent.

In late September 1990, a little over a month before the LTTE drove the Muslims out of Jaffna, Bosco and Salim from the LTTE’s Intelligence Wing arrested a prominent local Muslim who had earlier helped them. Kanthi, a notorious figure in the LTTE’s Gulag, took this Muslim man thrice to Nagar Kovil and threatened to shoot him. The detainee had told him, “My departing this world is in Allah’s hands. I do not worry about what you would do to me. But please, if you are shooting me, take me back home and shoot me in front of the Mosque.” The detainee was spared.

Rajan Hoole

  Sritharan Gopalaingam

END NOTES

[1] http://www.uthr.org/Rajani/Film%20_%20Press%20Kit.pdf

[2]Peter’s family are leading members of an Evangelical Church in Chundikuli. Asked if Anandarajah’s killer, as widely rumoured, had been the son of Pastor Ariyarajah (of a different independent church), the witness refuted this attribution. He said that Peter had a grudge against Anandarajah Sources close to the family said that another former LTTE member, now an independent pastor in Europe, confesses to involvement in the killing of the principal and said that he was brainwashed by the LTTE into doing so. Members of the St. John’s staff told these sources that some LTTE supporters on the staff were involved in the killing. The way the LTTE functioned, it was normal for them to have spies and informants in every institution and the reason why Anandarajah was killed, according to the staff members, was not because he organised a cricket match with the Army but because he did not allow the LTTE to intrude into the school. Whether these teachers went to the extent of instigating the killing is another question. Two of these teachers died violent deaths. One, a dramatist, moved to the University.

[3] Following the 1995 Jaffna Exodus, the young witness went to the Puthukkudiyiruppu area in Mullaitivu, where he lived the life of a vagabond. Since he had friends in the LTTE, he was allowed into protected areas. They tried to inveigle him into the organisation. He constantly gave them the slip, but not without seeing atrocities being committed on surrendered Sri Lankan soldiers. He had seen the Channel 4 video on the last stages of the war. He said that while he was shocked by pictures of civilian deaths, he felt no shock at all on seeing army executions of captured LTTE cadres, and added that the pictures were exact replicas of his haunting memories of the LTTE’s own atrocious behaviour. The witness used to freely make his comments in tea boutiques, and had said that the LTTE was guilty of grossly violating international humanitarian norms. He was overheard and arrested by members of the Media Wing and imprisoned for a month

[4]Tharan was the brother of LTTE’s Puli Devan, whose killing, reportedly after surrender in May 2009 featured in the White Flag controversy, and remains a major issue of government accountability.

[5] This was on the fifth anniversary of the LTTE’s order for the Muslims to quit the North en masse.

[6] http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/spreport6.htm

[7] http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=73&artid=10682

[8]The Jaffna University common room, which carries pictures of deceased members of the university staff, had no picture of Rajani into early 2015, an omission that several visitors found disconcerting.

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ALSO SEE

Michael Roberts, Tamil Persson and State, 2 vols, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications 2014