Lankan minister forced to leave Coimbatore following protests

In the second such incident in about month, a Sri Lankan minister was forced to leave Coimbatore on Saturday after a group of Naam Tamizhar Katchi workers staged a demonstration in front of his hotel, demanding that he leave India immediately.

Arumugam Thondaiman, the minister, vacated the hotel shortly after the protest and left the city for Chennai, police said.

Some NTK workers almost laid siege to the hotel located in the heart of the city, where Thondaiman was staying and raised slogans against him and the Sri Lankan government, they said.

The protesters attempted to jump over the main gate of the hotel but were prevented and chased away, police said. They also took 15 persons into custody in connection with the incident.

On January 10 last month, suspected MDMK and NTK activists allegedly barged into the house of the Ramanathaswamy Temple priest in Rameswaram and threw stones and slippers when a relative of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa was about to perform a 'pooja'.