LTTE cadres may join with Maoists of India

After the death of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the supreme of LTTE with his son and other top commanders of and the defeat of his organization on the hand of Sri Lankan Army, the cadres fled to India in disguise. Since they have good link with the Maoists of India particularly in military training and arms and ammunition supply, It is speculated that they may took the help of Maoists for shelter. The detail reports are here;

 

Maharashtra state Anti-Naxal Operation Cell (ANO) has already issued an alert to the adjoining states to step up their border-sealing activities to prevent ‘crossing-over’ and ‘joint-operations’ of the Naxal outfits. The LTTE, which had earlier also supported Maoist with training and arms, is likely to play mischief in order to disrupt election. “LTTE is in a shambles but it would not leave any stone unturned to settle scores with India,” said a cop. 

Intelligence agencies have often found evidence of joint training camps and meetings of the LTTE and Maoists in forests of south India. “We also have to disrupt these meetings in the jungles and hilly terrains,” the officer said. The threat in Gadchiroli, which shares borders with Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh that have large numbers of highly-sensitive zones, is also looming large.

Though the exact nature of the relationship is not known, the Maoists are also reported to have some links with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka. However, it is suspected that the Maoists have received arms training from the LTTE operatives in the past and this may be continuing. Links between these two may have been facilitated through the PWG, which has a record of co-operation with the LTTE in arms procurement and training (especially in the use of Improvised Explosive Devices). The arrest of Chandra Prakash Gajurel alias Gaurab, a member of the Maoist politburo, at Chennai airport in Tamil Nadu in August 2003 while trying to travel to Europe to lobby for a political solution to the seven-year-old insurgency in Nepal needs to be seen in this context.

 

The Maoists' links with the LTTE are by now documented to some extent. The earliest, and most authentic, report came in 1991. Speaking in the Andhra Pradesh assembly, then home minister M.V. Mysoora Reddy said the Maoists (in their then avatar as People's War) had acquired 60 AK-47s and 20 Sten guns from the LTTE. This was reiterated in the Lok Sabha, on Dec 10, 1991, by Bandaru Dattatreya, then an opposition MP who later rose to the office of minister of state for railways.

In 1995, Mallojula Venugopal, who earlier styled himself as 'Bhupathi' and currently uses the alias 'Sonu', the then secretary of what is now the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee, alluded to the LTTE link. He claimed that some ex-LTTE cadres had initially trained them in fabricating landmines.

Maintaining the same line, when questioned about LTTE instructors conducting training camps, Muppala Lakshman Rao alias 'Ganapathy', the Maoist chief, said in an interview in 1998: "They were not LTTE. They were ex-LTTE. What happened was that these people came to India after leaving their organisation and formed Communist groups. (We) had relations with these groups. As part of that, they held training camps for us."

He added: "We have had no relations with the LTTE till now. But we are not against having relations with them. We will certainly have links with them if an opportunity arises. We feel that such relations would be conducive to the revolutionary movement."

Further proof of the Maoists' LTTE links surfaced, once again, when two video cassettes containing LTTE's training modules were recovered in December 2001 from an arms dump of the rebels in Nelimaliga village of Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh. Further, reports of late-December 2002 indicated that they had some months earlier struck an arms deal with the LTTE, but the modalities (pricing) had to be finalised.

In the aftermath of the failed Oct 1, 2003, assassination attempt on then Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, then deputy prime minister L.K. Advani said that the rebels had links with the LTTE and had received expertise in using improvised explosive devices (IED) from the Sri Lankan outfit.

Confirmation from the Maoists of their links with the LTTE came in 2005 too. Speaking to mediapersons in a village in Madhuban block in Supaul district of Bihar, the spokesperson of the CPI-Maoist, Azad, said Dec 14 that they had learnt "new warfare tactics from the on-the-run and purged LTTE military commanders in 1986-87". He added that the "LTTE commanders gave them training (in landmine) mine production and its laying techniques".

Admittedly, the Maoist arsenal is indigenous and ingenious. As Vishwaranjan, the director general of police of Chhattisgarh, told this researcher in an interview: "The Maoists' purchase of arms is only in fits and bouts. Largely, they fabricate their weapons at their production units."

In principle, the Maoists seek to equip themselves through weapons looted from the police, which they have been doing rather successfully. But if the Maoists were to change tack and opt to shop in the grey arms market within the country or in India's neighbourhood, the LTTE and ULFA links would be of particular advantage. And the Maoists are flush with funds. According to Vishwaranjan, their annual extortion is "to the tune of INR 1,500 crore (Rs.15 billion).

( contents derived from P.V. Ramana is Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. He can be contacted at palepuramana@gmail.com/ times of india)