2 LTTE men arrested in Mangalore

BANGALORE/MANGALORE: Two LTTE sympathisers from Sri Lanka were arrested in a lodge in Mangalore on Saturday. The arrested, Bala Reuben (22) from Vavuniya and Nalla Tambi Jayasheelan (25) from Jaffna, were carrying gold worth Rs 3 lakh, 11 fake credit cards and a fake passport, which were seized by the police.
They used to purchase gold using the fake credit cards and passed it on to operation kingpin Kumar, who used to give them a commission.They said Kumar provided them with the fake cards to buy gold. He funded LTTE operations using the yellow metal procured by the duo, they said. They had come to Mangalore once earlier and were in the city this time for a fortnight. They mainly operated from Bangalore and Tamil Nadu. They came to India through Chennai in June 2004 and had met Kumar last in Bangalore in 2007.
In Bangalore, they were staying in a rented house in Ramamurthy Nagar, the eastern fringes of the city. The police suspect they were part of a well-organized racket. The police said Reuben was staying in the city for about a year, while Jayasheelan was here for about five months.
“Reuben was waiting for specific instructions from Kumar. He claimed he did not remember the exact location of the house they were staying in,” said a senior police officer investigating the LTTE connection. Kumar, who is a major LTTE operative, is a citizen of Australia and frequents Bangalore and Jaffna. He is alleged to be running a human-trafficking racket and is suspected to have brought in many LTTE operatives from Jaffna and surrounding areas to Bangalore.
“Reuben’s brother is a soldier in the LTTE army. Reuben confessed that from early childhood, his brother had been a student of a mobile training cum school run by the LTTE. The school is a mobile unit and seldom runs at one location for more than a day, fearing attacks from the Lankan forces,” the police said.
The fake credit cards may have been made by well-organized LTTE operatives using indigenous methods and Kumar could be the kingpin of the operation, the police said. “Reuben confessed to the police that their main objective was to purchase gold using the fake credit cards. Kumar would then ship the gold to LTTE headquarters in Lanka,” they said.
The unsolved questions before the police now are: Where did they get these credit cards? Who were the unsuspecting victims paying for these heavy purchases? What is the mode of operation of these credit-card makers? How do they steal credit card data?