According to intelligence sources, 41-year-old Manickadasan had left for Singapore on a bogus Sri Lankan passport in the first week of July 1999 and was reportedly there for a couple of weeks. A 17-member bodyguard squad of Manickadasan had earlier arrived on the Tamil Nadu coast and is suspected to have landed near Tangachimadam near Mandapam on June 15. Their whereabouts are not known.

When Manickadasan's presence in Singapore came to the knowledge of LTTE operatives there, he quietly moved to India. The intelligence agencies suspect he entered either through Mumbai or Thiruvananthapuram. On arrival, he is said to have established contacts with his closeconfidant and Mumbai-based international drug peddler Vasi, a Sri Lankan Tamil.

Manickadasan was reported to have had a meeting with some of his bodyguards, who had earlier sneaked into Madurai on July 23, after he entered India. His mission is not clear. Considering his Lebanon background, his close contacts with various Islamic fundamentalist groups and his two-decade relationship with ISI, he can be a threat to peace in Tamil Nadu during the forthcoming elections. According to intelligence sources, while the Sri Lankan government is supporting the PLOTE faction headed by MP Siddarthan, the Sri Lankan army and intelligence have thrown their weight behind the PLOTE faction headed by Manickadasan.

Manickadasan, whose mother is a Sinhalese and father a Tamil, belongs to Jaffna and came into the limelight in 1977. He was instrumental in the riots in Jaffna which created bad blood between the local Sinhalese and Tamils. In 1981, he led an attack on the army at a cultural event held in Jaffna, provoking armypersonnel to set the Jaffna library on fire. This is considered one of the major turning points for Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka, since the LTTE even now considers the burning down of the Tamil library as a major challenge. Basically a drug peddler, Manickadasan evolved as a major narco-terrorist and mercenary during 1978-80. He stationed himself in Pakistan and was shuttling between Peshawar, Delhi, Lahore and Karachi. In 1981, he joined the PLOTE headed by Uma Maheswaran, allias Mukundan. They became close associates. He was arrested the same year and put in Wellikada Jail.

On July 23, 1983, when Kuttimani and his associates were butchered in the jail, he escaped unhurt and was later transferred to the Batticaloa Jail. He escaped from there in 1983 and came to Chennai.

In the same year, he went to Lebanon and was one of the first Lankan Tamil leaders to get arms training on the Lebanon-Syria border from the anti-Arafat outfit, Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, led by Dr Joe Jabbas. During thecourse of the training, he established contacts with various Islamic fundamentalist groups operating in Sudan, Iran, Afganistan and Pakistan. He also came closer to the top echelons of the notorious Red Army of Japan, the dreaded Left-wing terrorist group.

He came back to India in 1984, strengthened his bonds with Uma Maheswaran and entered in a big way into drug trafficking, extortion and robbery.

Several criminal cases are still pending with Chennai Police. After the signing of the Rajiv-Jayewardene accord, he went to Sri Lanka in 1987. There, Major General Densil Kopekadewa, who was in-charge of the Sri Lankan army's operations in Jaffna and Vavuniya area and who happened to be his maternal uncle, reportedly used him against the IPKF. During that period, Manickadasan developed contacts with the infamous JVP, the Sinhala extremist group headed by J.Vijayaveera, and also became the military commander of the PLOTE.

In 1989, Uma Maheswaran wanted to use Manickadasan to plant bombs in New Delhi, Mumbaiand Calcutta on the lines of the blast at Meenambakkam airport in 1987. But Indian intelligence agencies got wind of it and arrested the group entrusted with the bombing mission at Tiruchi. In July 1989, Manickadasan is said to have got Uma Maheswaran, the founder and Secretary-General of PLOTEE, executed in Colombo, in association with other senior leaders of the PLOTEE. During late 1990, he moved to Vavuniya, following the withdrawal of the IPKF. He threw his weight behind the Sri Lankan army and launched a full-scale war against the LTTE. In 1995, he left for Europe and attempted to eliminate Lawrence Thilakar, the LTTE leader stationed in France, according to information with the Indian intelligence agencies, but failed. Then he moved to Switzerland and got a PLOTE man, who was in the know of Manickadasan's role in assassinating PLOTE supremo Uma Maheswaran, killed.

When the Swiss police became suspicious of him, he left for Sri Lanka. There, he started eliminating pro-LTTE elements from PLOTE. Of late,he has been seriously trying to eliminate the present leader of PLOTE and Member of Parliament D.Siddarthan, the dossier on him says. The recent clash between PLOTE and TELO happened because Manickadasan considered TELO as a pro-LTTE organisation. His operational headquarters at Vavuniya, known as Lucky House, is known as the torture chamber where many have died.