Indian Minister says LTTE is involved with Indian Naxalites

INDIAN MINISTER TELLS LOK SABHA THAT LTTE TERRORISTS ARE WORKING CLOSELY WITH NAXALITES OF INDIA

 

By Walter Jayawardhana

 

The  government informed the Indian parliament, Lok Sabha that the Tamil separatist terrorist group the Liberation Tigers were working very closely with the Indian Naxalite terrorist groups.

 

“We have enough information suggesting that there is coordination between them,” said India’s Home Minister Shivraj Patil  addressing the Lok Sabha, May 15.

 

New Delhi’s leading daily, The Times of India, reported that the government is of the opinion that the Naxalites were working in close coordination with some terrorist outfits operating in Jammu and Kashmir and were also in touch with the LTTE of Sri Lanka.

 

The newspaper quoted Patil having said, “Though the government has no documentary evidence of any memorandum of understanding signed between international terror outfits with naxalites in the country, we have enough information suggesting that there is coordination between them.”

 

Naxalites is a term loosely used to identify certain armed radical Marxist groups who are tended more to follow a Maoist ideology in India.  Although such movements were earlier  centered in West Bengal  now they are more active in insurgencies in places like Chattisgarh and Andra Pradesh.

 

Intelligence reports indicate the LTTE was engaged in arms and ammunition procurement activities in Andra Pradesh.

 

The Times of India quoting Minister Patil said, it was difficult for the government to interfere in security matters in some states as the dispensation there did not take it very kindly. He said this in an oblique reference to the naxalite problem in Chhattisgarh, which, according to him, accounted for 40%-60% of all Naxal incidents in the country.

 

“He said the government had provided UAVs to anti-naxal paramilitary forces deployed in the state which has so far only been used by the Army to gather intelligence on movement of ultras.

 

“Meanwhile, minister of state for home Sriprakash Jaiswal said cases of foreign funding for terrorists in Kashmir had increased in the last three years. In a written response to a question in the Lok Sabha, the minister said some expatriate Kashmiri and other Muslim organisations abroad were involved in channeling funds to terrorist outfits in J&K.

 

“According to the figures tabled in Lok Sabha, 16 cases of foreign funding were reported in 2006 against 12 in 2005 and four in 2004. Jaiswal said the government had constituted a Special Economic Intelligence Cell to obtain hard and actionable inputs on terrorist funding.”

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