Inspired by LTTE, two TN youths wanted to start outfit to carry out guerrilla attacks on stone quarries: NIA

CHENNAI: Nearly 50 days after the Omalur police arrested two men for possessing a country-made pistol, live rounds, a walkie-talkie and other things, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the case as the accused allegedly confessed that they were inspired by the LTTE movement to start their own movement called World Tamil Justice Court (WTJC).
The duo -- M Naveen Chakravarthy, 25, of Kichipalayam and J Sanjay Prakash, 24, of Sevapet in Salem district -- were in touch with a so-called intelligence wing man of LTTE through the Clubhouse app.
The duo were schoolmates. Naveen dropped out of college. Sanjay is a BE graduate in computer science and worked in an IT company for a while, according to their confession statements, accessed by TOI.
After reading about LTTE online and in books, they decided to start their own organisation to carry out guerrilla attacks against illegal stone quarries that destroy mountains, to bring water from Kerala, fight drug trafficking and to stop sexual harassment of women.
After their arrest, Q branch sleuths of the Tamil Nadu police interrogated them and found that they had taken a house on rent in Chettichavadi in Salem district to make weapons by watching videos on a YouTube channel.
"They bought steel required from scrap shops and converted them into spare parts at a lathe workshop claiming to be working on a college project," said an officer in Salem police, who was part of the team that arrested the duo.
The duo allegedly bought online and offline toolkits to make pistols. The ingredients to make live rounds were bought online. They also bought a walkie-talkie online to communicate with each other. They named themselves Freedom and Oast so that police would not track them.
After making their first pistol, they were on their way to unleash an attack at a stone quarry at Theevatipatti when they were intercepted by the Omalur police during a vehicle check. The police arrested them and seized their pistol and two-wheeler.
NIA officials said that Naveen's claims of having been in touch with an LTTE man living in Germany would be probed apart from their source of funding to make weapons as they had taken up only meagre jobs.