(Lanka-e-News 09.July.2009 4.00PM) A few days after Tamil Nadu chief minister, Mr M Karunanidhi told the state Assembly of a story of a hero`s escape on a horseback with none in the know of his whereabouts inferred here to mean LTTE leader V Prabhakaran, a close associate of the elusive LTTE leader who has known him for decades, Mr P Nedumaran, today said that Prabhakaran was alive.

The government of Sri Lanka announced that Mr Prabhakaran was killed. They also said that they had completed a DNA test on the body and then burned it in a hurry. First Sri Lanka does not have the facility to do a DNA test. And none of his blood relatives have been subject to the sampling for the test, Mr Nedumaran who was invited to speak on the topic of the challenges facing Tamils in Sri Lanka now, said.

Mr Prabhakaran had been announced as dead in the past too atleast four times in 1984, 1987, 1989 and in 2004. This is the fifth time the announcement has come. Similarly four wars of independence have been fought in Sri Lanka. The fifth war for independence for Eelam (the area of Tamils in Sri Lanka) will commence and our respected Mr Prabhakaran will lead that war, he told the gathering.





Meanwhile, a Tamil newspaper from Sri Lanka, Eezha Murasu, has further put a question mark on the Lankan government`s claim. An LTTE soldier who escaped from the war zone in the last days of the war in Sri Lanka has in an interview to the newspaper said that he had met Prabhakaran on the fourth or fifth of May when he had come to give final orders to the soldiers in that region and said that his leader had a close shaved face when he met them. The soldier who was also not in the know of Prabhakaran now said that it was not possible to have a bushy moustache by the time the government claimed to have killed him. The Lankan government announced that Prabhakaran was killed on 17 May, a claim that has been disputed by those who knew him. The body shown as Prabhakaran`s lacked the physical identities of the LTTE leader as the double chin, wrinkles and the youthful face which was easily turned by the soldiers 24 hours after the announcement of his killing.