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# ‘TELO Killed My Father’: Siddharthan Confronts the Bloody Past Behind Today’s Tamil Alliances
- URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/telo-killed-my-father-siddharthan-confronts-the-bloody-past-behind-todays-tamil-alliances/
- Published: 2026-09-03T07:25:13.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-03T07:25:13.000Z
- Author: Our Reporter
- Tags: JM Exclusive, September 2026

**JAFFNA, Sri Lanka —** Dharmalingam Siddharthan, the leader of the People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), has publicly accused TELO, a fellow Tamil political group, of killing his father 41 years ago, saying there was no uncertainty over who was responsible.

“There is no confusion whatsoever,” Mr. Siddharthan said Wednesday at a memorial for his father, V. Dharmalingam, a former member of Parliament. “Those responsible for his death were members of the TELO. Everyone knows that.”

His family, he said, learned within half an hour of the killing that TELO was responsible.

The Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization, or TELO, was one of several armed Tamil groups active during the 1980s. Like Mr. Siddharthan’s PLOTE, it later entered electoral politics. The two groups would eventually find themselves in the same political alliance.

Mr. Siddharthan addressed that history directly.

“Many people ask me, ‘How can you have an alliance with the TELO, which killed your father?’” he said.

“On this matter, the Tamil Arasu Kachchi is my guide. They formed an alliance with the Liberation Tigers, who killed Annan Amirthalingam.”

A. Amirthalingam, one of the leading Tamil politicians of his generation, was shot dead at his Colombo residence in July 1989 by members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

“The Liberation Tigers did not contest the elections themselves,” Mr. Siddharthan continued. “The TNA contested on their behalf.”

The Tamil National Alliance, or TNA, was formed in 2001 and went on to dominate Tamil parliamentary politics for much of the next two decades. PLOTE and TELO were both, at different periods, part of the alliance. Both are now members of the Democratic Tamil National Alliance, or DTNA.

“Everyone has made mistakes,” Mr. Siddharthan said. “Everyone has, in one way or another, been complicit in wrongdoing. Therefore, we must put those mistakes behind us and unite.”

PLOTE, which Mr. Siddharthan has led for decades, has itself faced allegations of killings, abductions and other abuses during Sri Lanka’s conflict.

Vetriselvan, a former PLOTE member who served as the organization’s coordinator in New Delhi, has accused Mr. Siddharthan and the late PLOTE military commander Manickam Dasan of involvement in a plot to kill a former PLOTE member known as Robin in Switzerland.

According to Vetriselvan, Robin had threatened to disclose information about the 1989 assassination of PLOTE founder Uma Maheswaran. Robin and his pregnant wife, Vathsala, were later killed.

PLOTE was also accused of internal killings during the early years of the Tamil militancy. In later years, the group faced allegations of killings, abductions and other serious abuses against civilians in Vavuniya, where it exercised considerable influence while operating alongside Sri Lankan government forces.

The killing of Mr. Siddharthan’s father was part of a double assassination that has remained one of the stark episodes of internecine violence in Tamil politics.

On the night of Sept. 2, 1985, M. Alalasundaram, a lawyer and former member of Parliament for Kopay, was abducted at gunpoint from his home in Kalliyankadu, Nallur. His abductors then drove to Uduvil, where Mr. Dharmalingam, a former member of Parliament for Uduvil and Manipay, was attending a wedding, and abducted him as well.

Their bodies were found the following day separately.

Mr. Alalasundaram was discovered in scrubland near his home with gunshot wounds to his chest and arm. Mr. Dharmalingam was found at a cemetery in Thavady with a gunshot wound to his forehead.

Forty-one years later, the two men were commemorated separately.

Mr. Dharmalingam was remembered Wednesday morning at his memorial in Thavady, where his son made his accusation against TELO.

Mr. Alalasundaram was honored at a separate ceremony at Sangiliyan Hall in Nallur, organized by the Nallur branch of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi and led by the party’s president, C.V.K. Sivagnanam.

Jaffna Mayor Mathivathani Vivekanandarajah, Deputy Mayor E. Thayalan, local council members, party members and relatives attended.

The two men were abducted on the same night, by the same group of men, and killed within hours of each other.

Forty-one years later they were remembered apart.