The vice president of India's Congress party, Rahul Gandhi said he felt "sad and guilty" at the "murder" of the leader of the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran in 2009, as well as his 12 year old son, Balachandran.
His comments were made this week when he spoke in Gujurat as part of a campaign tour on what he described as a "humilitating defeat in 2014" that had "drilled sense into us."
"We have learnt from that defeat,” Mr Gandhi was quoted by The Hindu as saying.
Speaking to students in Vadodara, Mr Gandhi said,
“I will tell you something personal. My father was killed by Tamil Tiger Prabakaran. When Prabakaran was killed and I saw his body, I didn’t know why but I felt very sad and guilty. I told Priyanka that I felt sad after seeing Prabakaran’s body and she also said the same. She also felt sad at his murder, his son’s murder.”
“These are my family’s values. We know what it means to face murder and killing,” Mr Gandhi said.