Colombo: After some speculation that Prabhakaran is not dead, on Tuesday the Sri Lankan army found Prabhakaran's body. Despite the pictures, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu who is in Delhi still does not believe that Prabhakaran is dead.
The images of Prabhakaran's dead body are gruesome but meant to counter the rumours and conspiracy theories that the terrorist leader is still alive.
In the images sent from the war zone, the terrorist leader is seen wearing military fatigues and seems to have been shot in the head more than once. Until the images were released the extreme fringe in Tamil Nadu kept stoking the doubts.
"Prabhakaran is still alive, many may be sad about it," said Dr S Ramdoss, founder, PMK.
Theories that now seem redundant once the video was released but some questions remain unclear. It seems surprising that a hunted terrorist would be in military fatigues and not in disguise.
And that he was carrying an identity card. It seemed like an execution style killing raising questions of whether he was captured and killed.
But the army says that Prabhakaran was fighting to the end and that he was shot as he tried to escape.
As the images were aired celebrations broke out on the streets of Jaffna and the President Mahinda Rajapaksa told his country that the war was over.
"As you already know our motherland has been completely freed from the clutches of separatist terrorism. From now on it is only the laws enacted by this sovereign Parliament that will be in force in every inch of Sri Lanka," said Rajapaksa, President, Sri Lanka.
But Prabhakaran's death runs the risk of deepening divisions in his country.
Even those Sri Lankan Tamils with little sympathy for the LTTE would be very uneasy about the Sinhala triumphalism on display.