Shanmugalingam Sivashankar

Shanmugalingam Sivashankar (; 1962 – 18 May 2009; commonly known by the nom de guerre Pottu Amman) was a Sri Lankan Tamil rebel and leading member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist Tamil militant organisation in Sri Lanka.

Early life Sivashankar was born in 1962. He was from Nayanmaarkattu near Ariyalai in northern Ceylon. He was the son of Shanmugalingam (Shanmuganathan), a clerk working in the up-country region. He was educated at Maheswari Vidyalayam, Canagaratnam Madhya Maha Vidyalayam (Stanley College) and Jaffna Hindu College.

Sivashankar was a supporter of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) MP V. Yogeswaran and once when they met, Sivashankar slashed his forearm and daubed Yogeswaran's forehead with blood.

LTTE Sivashankar joined the Tamil militant group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 1981 along with T. Sivanesan (Soosai). Efn|Another source says he joined the LTTE in 1982. Talks mediated by a former TULF MP failed to result in Pottu Amman's release and so the LTTE's Shankar abducted PLOTE member Jotheeswaran (alias Kannan) who was later exchanged for Pottu Amman. Pottu Amman was recalled to Jaffna, and in October 1987, when war had erupted between the LTTE and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), he was sent to Tamil Nadu to co-ordinate the flow of supplies from India to Sri Lanka. Following the IPKF's withdrawal in March 1990 and under Pottu Amman's leadership, TOSIS expanded greatly and became a formidable organisation, copying the tactics of Inter-Services Intelligence, Mossad and Shin Bet. As chief of TOSIS, Pottu Amman is believed to have masterminded the assassinations of Rajiv Gandhi, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Ranjan Wijeratne, Clancy Fernando and many others.

Death

What happened to Pottu Amman, like many senior LTTE members in the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, remains shrouded in mystery and is prone to wild speculations and rumours. Officially, Pottu Amman was killed in the early hours of 18 May 2009 as he, Colonel Letchumanan and other LTTE cadres tried to cross the Nanthi Kadal lagoon in a boat and were fired upon by Sri Lankan soldiers.

According to the Sri Lankan military, the wife of Soosai, head of the Sea Tigers, had told them during interrogation that Pottu Amman, together with Soosai, Prabhakaran and Prabhakaran's son Charles Anthony, had remained in the war zone in the final days of the war. The military claimed to have killed 18 senior LTTE members, including Pottu Amman, during the final battle of the civil war on 18 May 2009. In October 2010 the charges against Prabhakaran and Pottu Amman in relation to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi were dropped after the Central Bureau of Investigation filed a report stating that the pair were dead.

The failure of the Sri Lankan military to produce Pottu Amman's body has fueled the belief that he survived the civil war. Some have theorised that Pottu Amman escaped whilst others claim that he was captured by the Sri Lankan military and was being held captive in a secret location. The Sri Lankan military dismissed the reports, saying that, although they hadn't found his body, they knew that Pottu Amman had been killed in the final stages of the civil war. In March 2016, the Divaina reported that Pottu Amman was living with his family in Tamil Nadu, India using the name "Kuruttu".