Selvarajah Yogachandran

Selvarajah Yogachandran along with Nadarajah Thangathurai inspired several Tamil student radicals to rise against Sri Lankan state terror and founded the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization in the late 1960s. The group formally constituted itself into an organisation in 1979, inspired in part by the LTTE and the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS). Soon, it had become the most effective of the Tamil militant groups except the LTTE. Kuttimani was a firm believer that only a free, independent country for the island's Tamils in their traditional homeland will protect their legitimate rights. Kuttimani, Nadarajah and many others would later be arrested in 1981, in a brutal and intensive government crackdown of most of the Tamil liberation groups and activists. ==Nomination to the parliament==

Before his death, Kuttimani was officially nominated to the Vaddukoddai constituency in 15 October 1982, when the then sitting member of TULF party, T.Thirunavukkarau died on 1 August 1982. However the legal sources, then under the control of President J. R. Jayewardene, ruled that Kuttimani's nomination as a member of parliament was invalid. The then Prisons Commissioner Priya Delgoda announced on 16 October 1982 that Kuttimani would not be released from prison to take his oaths at the parliament. Kuttimani's appointment was gazetted while he was under a sentence of death. In a statement issued to explain the reasons for nominating Kuttimani to the vacant parliamentary seat, the TULF officials included five. Among these are two prominent reasons: (1) Kuttimani's nomination is a token protest against the state terrorism perpetrated from time to time through the agencies of the police and military personnel especially on the young Tamils of the country. (2) It is a protest against the death penalty imposed on Kuttimani and Jegan. Subsequently, on 4 February 1983, Kuttimani's death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment under the general amnesty proclaimed by President Jayewardene. After this, Kuttimani resigned his Vaddukoddai seat in the parliament, to which he was nominated. ==Imprisonment, death and martyrdom==

Death sentence Kuttimani was arrested by the Sri Lankan Navy on 5 April 1981 and was charged with an array of "criminal acts". The Sri Lankan court sentenced him to death. The presiding judge said that when he sat down he would pronounce his verdict as required by law. However, before that, he wanted to state that he did not view Kuttimani as a common criminal. He further said that if one day the president was to grant a reprieve to Kuttimani he would be happy to hear of it. Kuttimani's reply showed the world his yearning for a free country (Tamil Eelam) for his people. This was his reply: Upon his death sentence, Kuttimani was sent to the Welikada (Welikade) maximum-security prison to wait for his execution. There were both Sinhala and Tamil prisoners. The Sinhala prisoners were convicted of criminal offences such as murder, rape, robbery, etc. The Tamil prisoners were all militants. The Sinhala and Tamil prisoners were kept apart all the time to avoid racial clashes between them. Both the eyes of Kuttimani as well as Jeganathan were mutilated and gouged out with iron bars, since he had dreamed of seeing with them, through another person after his execution, an independent Tamil state. One version has it that Kutimani's tongue was cut out by an attacker who drank the blood and cried: "I have drunk the blood of a Tiger." He was then murdered and his body was disposed in front of a statue of the Buddha in the prison yard. ==See also==