Noted Sri Lankan journalist and columnist D.B.S. Jeyaraj, who wrote extensively for over four decades on the island’s ethnic conflict and key political developments, including as The Hindu’s Sri Lanka Correspondent, passed away in Canada on Sunday. He was 71.
From the 1980s, Mr. Jeyaraj’s byline was familiar to many who followed Sri Lanka’s civil war, fought by the armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Beginning his career at the Tamil daily Virakesari, he later reported for Colombo-based English newspaper The Island, as well as The Hindu.
Mr. Jeyaraj was arrested in 1987 during President J.R. Jayewardene’s time in power, allegedly over his reporting on clashes between the Indian Army and the LTTE. Soon after, he moved to Canada but continued to write on Sri Lanka, capturing the many layers of Tamil militancy, Tamil politics, and national political developments. Over the decades, he cultivated a vast network of sources in government, the security establishment, political parties, and among fellow journalists, to inform his own writing.
“There were two Tamil journalists who were keenly followed in Sri Lanka’s English media as the war escalated — Dharmeratnam ‘Taraki’ Sivaram and D.B.S. Jeyaraj,” recalled senior journalist Marwaan Macan-Markar, a former colleague of Mr. Jeyaraj and currently Asia Regional Correspondent for Nikkei Asia. “DBS’s reporting was very rounded. What we found remarkable was that even after he moved to Canada, his coverage remained sharp and incisive because of his wide network of sources across political and ethnic divides,” he told The Hindu.
While Mr. Jeyaraj faced threats and criticism for his opinions and commentary, his factual reporting was rarely challenged. “He would check with a dozen sources for each story to be very sure,” said M.A. Sumanthiran, General Secretary of the Illankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK), who is also Mr. Jeyaraj’s second cousin.
“It was a time when the war had just broken out. The media in Colombo regularly covered Defence authorities’ briefings, but some of us knew that was only one side of the story,” said senior journalist Hana Ibrahim, adding: “We counted on our colleague DBS for a perspective from the Tamil side, which was crucial to both our reporting and our understanding of the conflict.”
In recent years, Mr. Jeyaraj wrote a weekly column for Sri Lankan English dailies, including the Daily Mirror and the Daily FT, focusing largely on politics, while also writing on Tamil popular culture in India. His columns often traced political histories, family lineages, and the journeys of actors and playback singers, while exploring their connections to Sri Lanka. His most recent article appeared in The Morning on Sunday [May 17, 2026], marking the launch of his friend and senior journalist Veeragathy Thanabalasingham’s book Pathirikai Thuraiyil En Kathai (My Story in Journalism), which was held at the Colombo Tamil Sangam Sunday evening.
Published – May 17, 2026 10:28 pm IST
