It is learnt that the 73-year old, who is popularly known as Vaiko, had arrived from Chennai at 6.30am on Malaysia Airlines flight MH181.
He was told by immigration department officials that he was on the “banned list” and hence denied entry. No further explanation was given.
Vaiko has been a vocal campaigner in India against alleged human rights atrocities against ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka. He is also seen as a sympathiser of the now defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebel organisation.
The founder and secretary-general of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) party in the southern Indian state will likely be repatriated to India this evening.
Vaiko was accompanied by his aide, a man in his late 40s, who was not banned from entering the country.
Ramasamy told FMT that a highly placed source at the Home Ministry had attributed the ban on Vaiko to his perceived links to LTTE.
The DAP deputy secretary-general claimed that the ban had been insisted on by the Sri Lankan embassy after Vaiko had taken part in a human rights conference in Penang in 2015.
“He was in Malaysia before and there was no trouble then. I feel this is a case of misplaced priorities,” Ramasamy said.
“We allow most-wanted figures like Dr Zakir Naik to roam (the country) while innocent people like Vaiko are kept out,” he added.
Organised by the Penang Society of Advancement of Tamils, the one-day international forum on human rights violations in Sri Lanka was held on Nov 21, 2015 to discuss the United Nations’ (UN) findings on abuses in Sri Lanka, especially those perpetrated by the military there against Tamils.
He had also attended an international Tamil conference officiated by then parliamentary opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Penang in Nov 2014.
The event had reportedly drawn criticism from MIC leaders who felt that they had been excluded.
The conference had adopted the ‘Penang Declaration’. Among its eight resolutions was a call for a UN-monitored referendum for a sovereign Tamil Eelam, an independent state on the island of Sri Lanka.
Vaiko last served as MP for Sivakasi from 1998 to 2004 and was a member of the Rajya Sabha, the Indian Parliament’s upper house, from 1978 to 1996.
According to India’s ANI news agency, he was jailed in India for sedition over a speech he made in 2009.
He was alleged to have been critical of the Indian government over Sri Lanka’s war on the LTTE.
He had warned that India would not remain a united country if the Sri Lankan operation was not brought to an end.
The civil war, which broke out in 1983, lasted 26 years before the Sri Lankan military defeated the LTTE in 2009. It saw over 100,000 civilians, mostly Tamils, killed.
Both factions were accused of human rights violations, where instances of starvation, torture, the recruitment of child soldiers, and civilian-targeted attacks including suicide bombings, were rampant.
The UN Human Rights Commission had last year urged the Sri Lankan government to investigate disappearances including those of people who were alleged to have been secretly abducted by state-backed groups and paramilitary organisations.