New Delhi, Aug 7 - The new chief of the Tamil Tigers who is now in Sri Lankan custody was one of the rare few outside the group's intelligence set-up who knew months earlier that former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was to be assassinated.

Without taking Gandhi's name, Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias Kumaran Pathmanathan alias KP told a Sri Lankan Tamil in Tamil Nadu in November 1990 that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) would soon target the 'Indian leadership'.

KP - as he is widely known - made the explosive revelation over telephone from a foreign country six months before a LTTE woman suicide bomber finally killed Gandhi at an election rally near Chennai May 21, 1991.

But KP, in contrast to a section of media reports, is not an accused in the Gandhi case and is not directly linked to the killing. He is merely a suspect in the eyes of the Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Authority (MDMA), which is still probing the larger conspiracy angle related to Gandhi's killing.

KP's advance knowledge of the assassination has intrigued Indian security agencies.

Since secret decisions of the nature of Gandhi's killing were shared in the regimented LTTE on a strict need to know basis, questions have been asked how and why he came to know about the plot.

One logical explanation was the LTTE's absolute dependency on KP, who was the key international arms procurer for the Tigers, a role he performed with aplomb. He became the LTTE chief after the death of the group's founder leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in May this year.

The LTTE may have felt that KP needed to be told in advance since the international ramifications of Gandhi's killing might jeopardise the carefully laid out global network aimed at procuring arms and ammunition.

Another senior LTTE member outside its intelligence unit who too knew about the Gandhi killing in advance was Tiruchi Shanthan, who in 1990-91 was in charge of all Tiger operations in Tamil Nadu.

So, questioning KP could yield enormously useful information to India since the pellets, explosives and the Singapore Fragmentation Grenade (SFG) used in the assassination reached the LTTE courtesy the arrested man though they were meant for the war in Sri Lanka and not for the Gandhi killing per se.

However, if India decides to ask its security agencies to question KP, those picked for the task should be well clued into LTTE affairs.

There is a group of dominantly low-key officers in India, both serving and retired, who have followed the Tigers for decades.