Chennai: Tamil Nadu Police have arrested a woman for allegedly collecting funds for Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to revive the movement.
Mary Francisco, 40, a native of Sri Lanka, moved to Canada many years ago and became a permanent resident there. She was detained at the Chennai Airport as she was preparing to board a plane to Mumbai. The suspect was found to possess an Indian passport obtained with fake documents.
According to reports, she told the investigators of the State Intelligence about how huge money lying unclaimed in bank accounts were targeted by two former members and sympathisers of the LTTE based in Germany and Switzerland.
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She also told that a larger part of the sympathisers operating out of India, Canada, Singapore and Malaysia would facilitate withdrawal of the money by deploying agents with fake documents. The money would be transferred to different bank accounts in India and abroad in the names of companies or individuals and used for works of the “movement”.
Acting on the instructions of the two accused persons, Francisco said she came to India a couple of years ago and moved into a rented premises at Anna Nagar in Chennai. With the help of the rental agreement and domestic LPG connection papers, she managed to open accounts in different banks. With the help of some agents, she obtained a PAN card, Aadhaar card, voter identity card and Indian passport.
Francisco alleged connected to a few others and assigned the task of withdrawing several crores of rupees lying in a joint account held at Indian Overseas Bank’s Fort Branch in Mumbai. The two accused persons, whom she said were living in Denmark and Switzerland, had claimed that the money was raised for funding the activities of the LTTE.
The woman and her two accomplices accessed the details of the original account- holders and forged documents to impersonate their identities. She even managed to activate the mobile phone linked to the account in her name.
However, intelligence officials who were tracking the movement of the suspects alerted the immigration authorities and arrested Francisco when she was about to leave for Mumbai, the sources said, adding that the amount withdrawn illegally from various accounts by various persons who were part of the racket over the years was under investigation.
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They suspect, also a Sri Lankan national, had transferred a large amount of money to former members or sympathisers to revive the movement. The agency was tracking four on the basis of inputs that they was involved in the trafficking of arms and drugs from Pakistan to Sri Lanka and used the proceeds of the crime to fund former members of the organisation.
