Brother of Indian national arrested over knowledge of alleged assassination attack of President says sibling needs treatment not jail

The brother of an Indian national who was  arrested by the Sri Lankan police last month after he is said to have claimed knowledge about a purported plot to kill Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, says he should be released immediately and given medical treatment for a mental condition that he has had since the mid-1990s.

“This is a fabricated case. My elder brother is a victim of political insecurity in Sri Lanka,” said the 52-year-old brother of the man who has been identified by Sri Lankan authorities as M Thomas, told  the Indian Express.

The brother, who spoke on condition that he would not be named, said anyone who interacted with Thomas would know that he is not of sound mind. He also has a physical disability, he said.

His brother, a retired civil engineer who lives with his wife and son in a one-room apartment in a distant Mumbai suburb, said he has been in touch with Sri Lankan and Indian authorities to find out more about his brother’s present condition.

The brother said he wasn’t in regular contact with Thomas and that they last spoke a week before his arrest. “Thomas then said his life was in danger and that he was surrounded by enemies,” he said.

He said that on September 25, Indian officials visited him and told him that Thomas had been arrested in Sri Lanka for overstaying his tourist visa. He said the Indian officials wanted to see Thomas’s Aadhaar card.

The brother told The Indian Express that Thomas, who had exhibited “severe symptoms of mental illness” since an accident in 1997 in which he sustained a head injury, “needs treatment, not jail”.

He said that Thomas worked as an office assistant-cum-accountant for several years in the Mumbai office of the Airports Authority of India and used to live in Andheri. In 1992, he shifted to an AAI office in Kerala.