LTTE supporters are traitors to India - Jayalalitha

by our political correspondent

The arch rival of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and leader of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kalagam Jayalalitha Jayaram has branded whoever supported the LTTE as traitors of India and insisted that they should be arrested and imprisoned.

The former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha held a press briefing at the AIADMK Head Office on Thursday. Expressing her anger over the eulogy presented by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanithi on the death of LTTE's political wing leader S. P. Thamilselvan, Jayalalitha said that Karunanithi should be arrested for extending his sympathies to the LTTE.

"The LTTE has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation in India following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. Therefore extending the support or sympathising with the outfit would be considered treason to the Indian constitution.

Karunanithi being the head of the Tamil Nadu State Government has ridiculed India by sympathising with an eulogy written on Thamilselvan. He should be taken into custody for this act and his Government must be dissolved," Jayalalitha said.

Tamil Nadu politicians P. Nedumaran and Y. Gopalaswamy along with 262 of their supporters were arrested in Chennai last week for staging a procession to pay tribute to LTTE's Thamilselvan. Gopalaswamy and Nedumaran along with their supporters are now detained and the appeals made for their release have been rejected by the Chennai court.

They have been ordered to be detained for two weeks from last Monday. Gopalaswamy and Nedumaran are staunch supporters of LTTE and even met the LTTE leader V. Prabhakaran in his Wanni hideout a couple of years ago.