Colombo: An Indian journalist, arrested in Sri Lanka while filming military installations in a former LTTE stronghold without media credentials, was deported on Sunday.
Thamil Prabakaran, a 24-year-old Tamil Nadu resident, was deported this evening, police spokesman Ajith Rohana said. "He was sent back on the Chennai flight which left at 6.40 pm (local time)," Rohana said.
Prabakaran was earlier handed over to immigration authorities after being questioned by the police's Terrorism Investigation Division. After the questioning, all the footage shot by Prabakaran was deleted. "As such there was no reason for him to be prosecuted," Rohana said.
Authorities claimed the arrest had thwarted a plot to "carry out disinformation against the country". The man, purportedly attached to the Tamil Nadu publication 'Junior Vikatan', was arrested in the former LTTE nerve center of Kilinochchi in the north on Wednesday.
He had shot film of a military camp, a road and buildings devastated during the ethnic war. Police said Prabakaran had arrived in Sri Lanka on a tourist visa and violated rules by not informing authorities that he was on assignment to report from the former war zone.
Local media described him as a LTTE sympathiser. Indian diplomats were granted consular access to Prabakaran before he was deported. There is no official censorship in Sri Lanka but foreign journalists have to submit their passport to the military before entering the erstwhile LTTE stronghold.
Kilinochchi was the administrative center of the Tamil rebels until January 2009, when Sri Lankan forces recaptured the city.
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