Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, commonly known as Pillayan, former State Minister and leader of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP), has been arrested by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) for an ‘abduction and disappearance’, said Sri Lankan police today.
Pillayan was taken into custody in Batticaloa yesterday and is currently being transported to Colombo for further questioning.
Though initial reports suggested it was due to his connection to the deadly Easter Sunday attacks of 2019, the Sri Lankan police have not commented further on the claim.
Reports suggested that this arrest is in connection with the enforced disappearance of a university vice-chancellor in the Eastern Province in 2006.
In 2006, on the 15th of December, the Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University of Sri Lanka was abducted within a high security zone in Colombo 7. Prof. Raveendranath was on his way to attend a conference of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS), when he went missing. "Since he was in an area tightly controlled by the military, it seems likely that his captors are an armed group operating with the tacit support of the security forces," said Amnesty International, in a statement on the 20th of December.
Prior to his disappearance, on 20 September the same year, gunmen abducted his colleague, the Dean of the Arts Faculty of the Eastern University, Dr Bala Sugamar. It is widely reported that the kidnappers had demanded the immediate resignation of Sivasubramanium Raveendranath in return for Dr Bala Sugamar’s release. Sivasubramanium Raveendranath handed in his resignation and Dr Bala Sugamar was released soon after. The University did not accept his resignation, on the grounds that it was a presidential appointment, but he had not yet felt it was safe enough for him to return to the university, and had been carrying out his duties from Colombo.
According to TamilNet reportage of the incident at the time, Prof. Raveendranath was forced to resign his post recently following threats from paramilitary Karuna Group. The Karuna group is headed by the pro-government paramilitary leader who has long been associated with former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
In December, fellow pro-government paramilitary leader Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, also known as Karuna Amman, was questioned over the same incident.
