However, he later converted as an opponent of the Tamil movement and is now serving as a minister. Prabhakaran and the LTTE received a major blow when his confidant Col Karuna parted ways and formed his own outfit. But both the sides continued to violate the agreement which was brokered by Norway until it was formally abrogated by the Mahinda Rajapakse Government. LTTE, which is believed to be funded by Tamils living in Europe and other countries across the world, agreed for a ceasefire with Sri Lanka in 2002. The outfit has also earned the ire of Human Rights Groups who allege that the LTTE recruits young children to fight against the army. Interestingly, Black Tigers, the suicide wing of the LTTE, came into prominence when the Tigers' launched their first suicide attack against a Sri Lankan army camp killing 40 soldiers. The LTTE is the only terrorist outfit in the world to have three armed forces wings - Tigers (ground), Sea Tigers (navy) and Air Tigers - (air force). Though his followers consider him as a freedom fighter struggling for Tamil emancipation from Sinhala oppression, various nations, including India, have banned the organisation and branded him as a terrorist.
While Charles was in the battlefront during the final phase of the war, the whereabouts of others are not known, but it is widely speculated that they are not in Sri Lanka. Though no one is sure about Prabhakaran's personal life, he got married to Madhi Vadhani on Octoin Tirupporur near Chennai and has daughter named Duwaraka - two sons - Charles Anthony and Balachandran. Prabhakaran founded the LTTE in the late 1970s and carried out his first political murder against the mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah, a fellow Tamil, by shooting him at point blank range while he was about to enter Hindu temple at Ponnaalai. Born on 26 November, 1954 in the northern coastal town of Velvettithurai on the Jaffna peninsula, Prabhakaran, the youngest of four children, began attending political meetings and practising martial arts and soon became involved in the Tamil protest movement. In his outfit's struggle for the separate Tamil homeland, Prabhakaran introduced suicide bombers, mostly young women, and targeted major installations of the Sri Lankan government, including military headquarters and the lone international airport in the country. The LTTE had a grouse that Gandhi had imposed a peace agreement on the Tamils forcibly in 1987 and the IPKF was used to attack its cadre. After the LTTE's battle with the IPKF in the jungles of Sri Lanka, Prabhakaran targeted Rajiv Gandhi and chose Sriperumbudur near Chennai to kill him during the election campaign in 1991 by using a suicide bomber.
What started as a liberation movement in the late 1970s to attain freedom for "oppressed" Tamils from the clutches of Sri Lankans by Prabhakaran, the LTTE later evolved as a ruthless organisation for which violence became a legitimate tool to eliminate political opponents. He did not spare his comrade-in-arms like PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, TELO's Siri Sabarathinam, EPRLF's Padmanabha and 14 of his colleagues in Chennai, besides his own LTTE dissenters like Mahthiah. Known as 'thambi' (younger brother), Prabhakaran was responsible for the elimination of Sinhalese leaders - President Premadasa, Damini Dissanayake (UNP Presidential candidate) and Ranjan Wijeratne and moderate Tamil leaders - Appapillai Amirthalingam, Yogeswaran and his wife and Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was a foreign minister. A 'freedom fighter' for his supporters and a dreaded terrorist for others, Prabhakaran was wanted by Interpol and many other organisations since 1990 for terrorism, murder and organised crime. Prabhakaran led the LTTE from the secret jungles of Wanni in northern Sri Lanka and survived many a battle but the current assault from the Lankan forces ended his dream as well as his life.
Though the LTTE occasionally paused for diplomacy, first initiated by India in Thimpu in 1985 and later by Norway in 2002, there was no looking back for the dreaded organisation from its chosen path of gun.
Started in 1972 as Tamil New Tigers by a group of young boys headed by him and renamed as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1975, the outfit became more aggressive after the infamous Wellikade jail massacre in which separatists leaders Kuttimani and Jagan were eliminated by the forces. The 54-year-old son of a government officer and a school dropout gave a new dimension to militancy by pioneering suicide bombing and cyanide death for cadres under attack in the war for Tamil Eelam that consumed more than 70,000 lives including a score of Sinhalese and Tamil leaders apart from Rajiv Gandhi. COLOMBO: Velupillai Prabhakaran, who led a ruthless movement for more than three decades, was a dogged fighter for a separate homeland for Tamils in Sri Lanka, but his opponents saw him as a megalomaniac who never tolerated dissent.