With the fall of the last Tamil rebel-held town of Mullaitivu in northeast Sri Lanka, the celebrations have begun in the army camp. The Lankan military, in fact, is planning to take journalists by road to Mullaitivu to highlight its success in driving the LTTE out of their military headquarters. But one big question persists: where is LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran?

All sorts of theories about his whereabouts are doing the rounds. While some believe Prabhakaran might have left the country to recuperate from wounds inflicted by the Army, the Lankan Navy insists he’s still in Mullaitivu. A blockade has been set up off the north-eastern coastline to keep him and other LTTE leaders from fleeing. The Lankan forces recently captured five of the six airstrips being used by the LTTE, but the hunt continues:

The rise of Prabhakaran

In 1972, at the age of 18, Velupillai Prabhakaran founded the Tamil New Tigers (TNT), a successor to many initial organisations that protested against the post-colonial political direction of the country that pitted the minority Sri Lankan Tamils against the majority Sinhalese population. In 1975, after becoming involved in the Tamil movement, he carried out his first assassination when he shot the Mayor of Jaffna, Alfred Duraiappah while he was about to enter a temple in Punnelary. The murder was in response to the 1974 Tamil conference incident for which Tamil radicals blamed Duraiappah as he backed the then Sri Lanka Freedom Party, implicated in the violence.

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