Karthic Manoharan, a nephew of the slain LTTE founder, accuses the Naam Tamilar Katchi leader of fabricating his ties to the rebel chief and profiting from his name.
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — April 22, 2026
A nephew of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the slain founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, has issued a blistering public appeal to voters in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, urging them to reject Seeman, the Tamil nationalist politician, days before a round of polling in the state assembly elections.
The statement was issued this week by Karthic Manoharan, a son of Mr. Prabhakaran’s elder brother, Manoharan, who lives in Denmark. In it, he accuses Seeman, leader of the Naam Tamilar Katchi party, of fabricating his closeness to the LTTE leader and of building a political career on the symbolism of the Sri Lankan Tamil struggle without meaningfully advancing it.
Mr. Prabhakaran’s wife, Mathivathani, and their three children were killed in the final phase of Sri Lanka’s civil war, which ended in May 2009 with the military’s offensive in the northeast. Surviving members of his extended family have, for the most part, kept out of public life.
Mr. Karthic Manoharan casts the election as a test of political judgment for Tamil Nadu voters, arguing that only residents of the state can discern which candidates will serve them. He urges voters not to be “misled” by political figures who, in his telling, trade on the memory of the Sri Lankan Tamil struggle without producing meaningful results for anyone.
He invokes the years between 1983 and 1998, when tens of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils fled to Tamil Nadu to escape the island’s ethnic violence and civil war. Those who crossed the Palk Strait, he writes, “never felt like migrants from another country.”
Mr. Karthic Manoharan reserves his sharpest language for Seeman. He claims that the politician traveled to LTTE-held territory in Sri Lanka in 2008, in the months before the group’s military collapse, and that he was initially refused a meeting with Mr. Prabhakaran because of concerns within the organization about his conduct. Seeman was eventually granted only a brief group audience, the statement says.
In the years since the war’s end, Mr. Karthic Manoharan alleges, Seeman has built a political career on “fabricated” narratives about the LTTE and on divisive rhetoric, and has raised funds in the name of Sri Lankan Tamils without delivering tangible benefits to them or to the people of Tamil Nadu. A pointed passage contrasts his uncle's austere life with Seeman’s present-day lifestyle.
Seeman, a former film director, founded Naam Tamilar Katchi in 2010 and has positioned himself as an uncompromising voice for Tamil nationalism. He has repeatedly defended Mr. Prabhakaran in public speeches, a stance that has drawn a fervent youth following in Tamil Nadu.
Naam Tamilar Katchi has fielded candidates across Tamil Nadu but has yet to win a seat in the state legislature. Its performance in the current election cycle is being closely watched as a measure of how durable Seeman’s brand of Tamil nationalism remains against the entrenched Dravidian parties.
Seeman had not publicly addressed the statement by Wednesday evening. A request for comment sent to the Naam Tamilar Katchi did not receive an immediate response.
The statement comes even as small signs of support for Seeman have surfaced in parts of northern Sri Lanka. Banners backing Mr. Seeman have appeared in several areas of Jaffna in recent days, and on Wednesday, a small group of youths organized a modest bullock cart procession in his support in the Manipay area. Sources said the displays may have been backed by a handful of diaspora-linked individuals, though this could not be independently verified.
Tamil Nadu is set to go to the polls on Thursday, April 23.
