Prabhakaran is said to have been killed in the third week of May 2009 while fighting government troops. His death was formally announced on May 19. India had subsequently asked for a death certificate from Sri Lanka so that Prabhakaran’s name could be struck off from the list of accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The Sri Lankan foreign ministry had recently handed over a Colombo high court document — and not a death certificate — to the High Commission of India (HCI), confirming Prabhakaran’s death.  It stated that the LTTE leader was killed near the Nandikadal lagoon on May 19. The report claimed Prabhakran’s death was confirmed following a DNA test.

Through HCI, the court document was handed over to the CBI’s Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency, which is probing the case. “The CBI has told me that they have received documentation from the government of Sri Lanka confirming the death of Prabhakaran,” Home Minister P. Chidambaram had said earlier this month in New Delhi. But sources in Colombo and New Delhi have told  that the document given by Sri Lanka might not be enough to convince Indian courts to strike off Prabhakaran’s name. So the MDMA then shot off another a letter in the second week of February asking for more proof.