Shanmugalingam Sivashankar, aka Pottu Amman, joined LTTE in 1981 along with Colonel Soosai, and became second in LTTE's military wing after leader Velupillai Prabhakaran. Pottu Amman was trained at a coastal camp in Vedaranyam in Tamil Nadu. He was responsible for training Black Tigers for suicide missions, most notably when former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed in 1989. Another attack was against president Ranasinghe Premadasa who was killed when a Black Tiger blew himself up also killing 23 bystanders on May Day 1993. Pottu Amman is also believed to have been in charge of planning the LTTE's covert operations and was the brain behind most of the LTTE's successful military operations. He may have been killed by the Sri Lankan Army at Vellamullivaikkal on May 18, 2009, but his body has never been identified.