At a time when no Tamil wanted to be associated with the Sri Lankan Army, described as a Sinhalese Army, Razeek, an important figure of Tamil militancy, had dared to openly join hands with it to fight the LTTE.

Trained in advanced combat on the hill slopes of Uttar Pradesh by Indian agencies in 1984, Razeek was Sri Lanka's Kuka Parrey in the making and an invaluable asset to it's Army in eastern Sri Lanka.

He knew the language, he knew the people and he knew the geography of Batticaloa. He could make undetected forays into LTTE territory and gather information about their activities, and most important of all, he was trained to kill.

Razeek had conducted several ``operations'' against the LTTE inBatticaloa. And if speculation is to be believed, with the backing of EPRLF leader Varadaraja Perumal -- who recently returned to Sri Lanka after ending nine years of exile in India -- he was planning to expand his ``group'' of 150 men into a bigger force. This force was to function as the Tamil regiment of the Army. The rationale was that jobless Tamil youth would much rather prefer to take to arms against the LTTE under a Tamil leader than join the Sinhalese-dominated Army. The arms and training would be provided by the government, and Razeek was to provide the leadership.

When Varadaraja Perumal met President Chandrika Kumaratunga last month, Razeek accompanied him to discuss these plans. It was fast developing into a dangerous situation for the LTTE.

Last Saturday, as Razeek stood unguarded at a mechanic's shop in Batticaloa, a 16-year-old suicide bomber came up from behind, put his arm around his neck and in the LTTE's chanceless method, detonated himself, killing him on the spot.

VaradarajaPerumal wept openly at Razeek's funeral in Karaithivu in eastern Sri Lanka, his first public appearance since his return to the island. For the Army too, it was a big blow. ``Razeek was as valuable to us as any soldier of the Sri Lanka Army,'' said Col R. Zaki, brigade commander of Batticaloa. His funeral was held with full military honours.

Only two days before his death, Razeek told The Indian Express at his heavily fortified ``camp'' in Batticaloa that he and his ``boys'' had killed nearly 30 LTTE cadres in the last three years. He had returned, minutes before the meeting, from another of his ``operations''.

Razeek's enmity with the LTTE went back a long way to the time when the EPRLF threw in its weight behind the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Razeek, who was the leader of the EPRLF's military wing, fought along side the IPKF to tame the LTTE.

``I killed 237 LTTE cadres in those years,'' he said and spoke with pride about his training in India. Razeek had been a marked man since then, butescaped several attempts on his life by the LTTE. He was a refugee in India for five years before he returned to Sri Lanka in 1996, by which time the political landscape of the island had changed dramatically.

Perumal, his mentor, was still in India and his insistence that the EPRLF should continue to maintain an armed wing led to his exit from the party. As much out of a deep-seated conviction that the LTTE had to be destroyed as to protect and maintain himself and his cadre, he openly joined forces with the Army. The cadre of the ``Razeek group'' were trained and paid salaries by the Army.

``The LTTE will never come forward for negotiations on its own, it has be brought forcibly. It is essential for a political solution to the problems of the Tamil people that the LTTE is first militarily weakened. This is what we are doing,'' he said.

For his assistance to the Army against the LTTE, he had become a hate figure among Tamils. But Razeek maintained he used his guns not against the Tamil people but onlyagainst the Tamil Tigers.

Other groups like PLOTE and TELO too have armed cadres maintained by the Sri Lanka Army, but their leaders hunt with the hounds and run with the hares. Razeek was the only one who stood openly against the LTTE. He paid for it with his life. In fact, in a country where the average life expectancy of a combatant is about 25 years, it was surprising that 35-year-old Razeek had survived so long.

His killing is a major setback to Perumal's renewed search for a niche in the violent Tamil politics of Sri Lanka. It is also one more warning to all Tamils that it will not hesitate to cut down anyone who dares to stand against it.