HC stops deportation of Tamil refugee to Lanka

Three weeks ago, Theva Satesh Kumar, a Sri Lankan Tamil leaving for Nairobi, was detained by the Mumbai Police and sent back to Sri Lanka. The electronics engineer was held at Mumbai airport following a notice issued on him by the Sri Lankan government through Interpol. What happened to him

Nehru got a reprieve on Thursday, when the Madras high court restrained the Tamil Nadu government and the Centre from deporting him

LTTE LINKS once he returned to Sri Lanka was still not known.

V M P Nehru alias Eela Nehru on the other hand was a very lucky man. Facing imminent deportation to Sri Lanka, Nehru got a reprieve on Thursday, when the Madras high court restrained the Tamil Nadu government and the Centre from deporting him to the island nation and asked them to maintain status quo till August 28. A division bench comprising Justice V Dhanapalan and Justice C T Selvam granted the interim relief to the Lankan Tamil on a habeas corpus petition filed by his wife Santhira Leela, who said he faced certain death if he was sent back to Sri Lanka.

Human rights activists in the state have voiced their objections to any Lankan Tamil being deported back to the island country. "It is akin to signing a death warrant for them," said V Suresh, national general secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). He has written to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa requesting her to persuade the Centre to withdraw the deportation orders against three persons - Nehru, Soundarajan and Chenthuran - and "ensure that they are not forcibly taken back to Sri Lanka".