Where is Prabhakaran's family?

Slain Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam supremo V Prabhakaran's wife and teenage son had fled to Tamil Nadu last year, from where they were to fly to Singapore and then to an undisclosed location, a key aide of the rebel chief said, amid speculation that the entire family had been wiped out in the conflict.

 "When intelligence agents interrogated a close aide of Prabhakaran, he had said that last year, Prabhakaran's wife (Mathivathani) and younger son (13-year-old) Balachandran had escaped by boat to Tamil Nadu, where they were scheduled to meet an LTTE cadre, who was to arrange for them to fly to Singapore, from there to an unknown destination," the Bottomline newspaper reported.

The newspaper did not reveal the name of Prabhakaran's aide in its report, while noting that there were rumours that the LTTE chief's wife, younger son and daughter Duwarka too had been killed during the final battle. However, an officer from the battlefront said they had not recovered the body of any children.

"Prabhakaran's daughter, Duwarka, who was said to be studying in Ireland, during the height of the final battle, hadn't returned to Sri Lanka, but had been in touch with her father via phone," it said quoting 'a credible source' from Norway.

"She (Prabhakaran's daughter) had arrived in Oslo as instructed by her father, as there were many to take care of her there," the Bottomline said.

The slain Tiger supremo's wife and daughter were earlier believed to have fled to Europe as the conflict intensified in Sri Lanka's north. The Sri Lankan army has neither found their bodies nor mentioned much about them.

The whereabouts of Prabhakaran's teenage son Balachandran were also not known while the LTTE chief's elder son Charles Anthony was killed and his body was found in the No Fire Zone.

According to Karuna Amman, a former top commander of Prabhakaran and now a Federal Minister, a spokesman for LTTE's International Relations head S Pathmanathan had told him that the Tiger supremo's wife and daughter were dead.

"But I cannot confirm this personally... If they (Prabhakaran's family) were in the No Fire Zone, they could not have escaped," Karuna said in Vavuniya on Tuesday.