Some reasons this body may not be Prabhakaran's

Is the Sri Lankan government playing a trick on the international community by showing a body double and claiming it to be Prabhakaran? Here are some questions observers are asking.

Why is he so good looking?

Not matching: The skin tone on the face and the ear aren't the same. His son (inset), also killed in the battle, looks older than him.u00a0

Prabhakaran is 54, but the picture shows him without a single wrinkle. His son Charles looks older in the picture the Lankan army has released. There's something dubious about the way his face is shown. If his skull were blown off, as claimed by the army, how come his face is so neat and untouched? If he were hiding and on the run, as claimed by the army, how come he looks fresh and clean-shaven? Have the soldiers put a Prabhakaran mask on someone's face?

Why isn't his ear matching his face?
The skin tone of his ear is darker than the tone of his face. Have the soldiers hired a prosthetic expert to graft a face on to some corpse? Are they doing a Dasavatharam gag in real life? It looks like the mask is peeling off when the soldiers move the body.

How could they do a DNA test in two hours?
Experts say it takes at least four days to do a DNA test. How could the army do it in two hours, that when they say they found the body in a remote jungle? How did they move his blood or bone marrow sample to a forensic lab so quickly? Did the army have an ante-mortem report (say, tissue or blood samples from before his death) against which they could corroborate their theory that it was Prabhakaran who was dead? Questions, questionsu00c3u00a2u00c2u0080u00c2u00a6
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Do Tamil politicians know something we don't?
Nedumaran of Tamil Desiya Iyakkam said he knew for sure that Prabhakaran was alive. Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi said he wouldn't react to reports of Prabhakaran's death. What's stopping them from accepting the footage released by the Lankan army?
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Wasn't cyanide Prabhakaran's preferred mode of exit?
He gave capsules to all his Tigers so that they could kill themselves instantaneously when cornered. Why didn't he bite his cyanide capsule when he knew his game was up? Few believe he was shot in battle. Tamil lore has it that he always carried two capsules with him. The army claimed to have identified him with the help of rebel LTTE leaders Karuna and Daya Master, and posted a picture of the body on the country's army website. The body here and the body in the TV footage don't match.

(These questions were asked as of 3.30u00a0 am today. Lanka may come up with someu00a0 explanations through the day, but many questions are likely to remain unanswered).

DNA in 2 hours? Just impossible

Chandrashekhar G was a part of the forensic team assigned the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. Now retired, he lives in Yelahanka. We asked him what he thought of the Lankan army claims about Prabhakaran, and he was incredulous they had done a DNA test within two hours. "It is impossible," he told MiD DAY. "We need at least four days to put it through a DNA sequencer and arrive at some conclusion."