Kumaravelu Vignarajah
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Kumaravelu Vignarajah (also Nishanthan to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE or Tamil Tigers), Chandran to Sri Lankan military intelligence[1]) was a Sri Lankan Tamil who worked as a spy for the Sri Lankan Intelligence Service, arrested on eight charges while living in Canada, accused of infiltrating the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while fundraising for the Tamil Tigers. It was discovered he was passing Sri Lankan military secrets to the Canadians, and classified information from both Canada and Sri Lanka to the militant group.[1][2]
A native of Avrankal Sri Lanka, where his "very rich" father ran a coconut plantation,[3] He was recruited as a spy for the Sri Lankan military intelligence as early as 1982, and worked for the government forces as a spy under Lt. Col. Sunil Tennakoon. He also maintained a job at the Bank of Ceylon.[1]
On January 9 1985, Sri Lankan forces conducted a raid in Vignarajah's hometown, killing a deputy leader of the Tigers, ostensibly after he confirmed information from a captured Tiger that suggested the deputy's presence.[3]
By 1986, he was a trusted friend of Gopalaswamy Mahendraraja, a commander of Tiger forces.[3] In the autumn of 1987, Vignarajah was photographed during an assault against an Indian Peace Keeping Force platoon, and his photograph was published on the cover of the November edition of India Today.[3] He later took a journalist from the magazine to meet Thenmuli Rajaratnam, a militant who later made headlines for assassinating former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.[1]
In 1988 he left his job at the bank, and the following year told his government handlers that Velupillai Prabhakaran had begun to suspect he might be a spy, and thus requested their assistance fleeing the country, immigrating to Canada.[3]