Hunger striker's £7m Big Mac: Tamil who cost London a fortune in policing was sneaking in fast-food

Published 09th Oct 2009

He was the hunger striker at the centre of one of the longest-running demonstrations ever mounted in Britain.

For weeks Parameswaran Subramaniyan lay in a tent outside the Houses of Parliament as Tamils protested about the plight of relatives under attack in Sri Lanka.

At one stage, his supporters claimed he was 'critically weak'.

The protest finally ended in June, but two revelations put it back in the spotlight yesterday.

First, police said it had left them with a £7.1million overtime bill.

Then it emerged that Mr Subramaniyan, 28, had eased his ordeal by secretly eating McDonald's burgers.

Scotland Yard surveillance teams using specialist monitoring equipment had watched in disbelief as he tucked into the clandestine deliveries.

A police insider said: 'In view of the overtime bill, this has got to be most expensive Big Mac ever.'

Scotland Yard made no official comment but senior sources said police decided against dragging the bogus hunger striker out of his tent for fear it would start a riot.

One source said: 'This was such a sensitive operation that it was felt officers could inflame the situation if we brought the hunger strike and demonstration to a premature end. This is a further example of the complexities of policing London today.'

The Yard figures revealed that officers pocketed nearly five times more overtime on the Tamil demonstration - which at times brought Westminster traffic to a standstill - than they did for the G20 summit of world leaders in the capital in early April.

The overtime bill for policing the Tamils was nearly as much as the one for foiling the country's biggest-ever terrorist plot, to blow up several trans-Atlantic flights in 2006, which added up to £7.3million.

Yard insiders believe the huge amount of resources diverted to the 72-day Tamil demonstrations contributed to a 9 per cent increase in burglary across London in the past six months.

Police mounted a 24-hour presence in Parliament Square from April 6 to June 17.

Several hundred protesters were at the site every day with the numbers swelling to thousands each time there were fresh reports of civilian deaths during the Sri Lankan government's offensive to end its 25-year civil war against the separatist Tamil Tigers.

Protesters were calling on Britain to stop Sri Lanka shelling the last rebel-held enclave, where thousands of civilians were trapped.

Source: ' Daily Mail '

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