Chennai, April 22 (IANS) India should take steps to ensure that Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa faces trial for war crimes, former Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa said Friday.

 
 "The Indian government should initiate immediate steps to make Rajapaksa and his cronies stand trial in the International Court of Justice for his war crimes," the AIADMK chief said in a statement here.
 
 "Otherwise, (Congress president) Sonia Gandhi's platitudinous assertions on Sri Lanka before the Tamil Nadu electorate would ring resoundingly hollow," she added.
 
 Jayalalithaa added that New Delhi was very much party to "the carnage against the Tamil people in Sri Lanka" when Colombo militarily destroyed the Tamil Tigers in 2009.
 
 She said when there was an international outcry and demand that Rajapaksa should be tried for war crimes, neither the Indian nor the Tamil Nadu governments voiced anguish over Tamil suffering.