Sri Lankan Tamil special camp inmate seeks nod to live in Tamil Nadu, plea rejected as he is deemed ‘dead’

CHENNAI: The relatives of a Sri Lankan Tamil man, who is now lodged in the special camp for foreigners in Tiruchy, have a rather tricky task at hand: first prove it officially that he is still alive and then seek permission to allow him to stay with them.

Krishnakumar alias Kandhan, a Lankan Tamil now detained in the Tiruchy special camp, sought permission to live in Tamil Nadu, but was told by the Commissionerate of Rehabilitation and Welfare of Non-Resident Tamils that he was already dead and thus there was no need to take action on his petition.

Now, his aunt has approached the Madras High Court saying he was very much alive and requested a direction to the authorities to allow him to stay with her.

The letter sent to Krishnakumar in April from the Commissionerate of Rehabilitation, accessed by this newspaper, says there was no reason to take action on his petition as he was dead.

In her petition, his aunt T Nageswari, an inmate of the Sri Lankan refugee camp at Uchapatti, Madurai, claimed that she was a Lankan refugee who fled to India in 1990 due to genocide there.

“My sister’s son Krishnakumar was arrested in 2015 by the Q branch and remanded under various IPC sections. In 2018, he was awarded 10 years of jail by trial court, which the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court reduced to seven years. After the completion of sentence, he was detained at the special camp from July 2022,” Nageswari said in her petition.

Nageswari and Krishnakumar had been sending representation seeking permission to release him and allow him to stay with her at the refugee camp in Madurai, only to be intimated about his own death as a reply to his request.