Crime branch officers on Sunday arrested a 35-year-old Sri Lankan, who was an operative of banned outfit Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), when he was attempting to catch a flight to Nairobi.Interestingly, the accused, an electronics engineer, initially told cops that he entered India by air, but after sustained interrogation, revealed that he took a boat from Sri Lanka and got off at the coast of Tamil Nadu. He ran out of luck as the Sri Lankan government issued an Interpol notice against him, due to which he was nabbed at Mumbai airport.The arrested person, identified as Theva Satesh Kumar, was born and brought up in Jafna in Sri Lanka, which has been an LTTE-dominated area.According to sources, Kumar was detained by immigration authorities at the international airport. He was then sent to Sahar police station after which the crime branch was notified.

An examination of Kumar’s passport revealed that the immigration stamp on his passport was fake. “He told us he knew that he would be caught if he boarded a flight from Sri Lanka. So he hired a fishing boat on May 9 and got off Vedaranyam on the Tamil Nadu coast,” an officer said. From Vedaranyam, Kumar took a bus to Nagapattinam and travelled to Chennai, Hyderabad and then came to Mumbai.

The officer added, “He claimed that after the crackdown and disappearance of the LTTE in Sri Lanka, the cadres had gone into hiding and were looking to move out of the country. He said he was arrested in 2009 by the Sri Lankan authorities and tortured. He knew that the Sri Lankan police were looking for him, which is why he fled.”

Kumar has a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from SSM Engineering College in Tamil Nadu. He lived in Indian between 2001 and 2006 for his education. “We will inform the concerned ministry about him and will then take required measures to deport him,” said joint commissioner of police (crime), Himanshu Roy.(dna india)