Kuala Lumpur, Aug 12 - The chief of Malaysia's proscribed Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) has been asked to account for money collected from the ethnic Indian community to file a suit against the British government in 2007.

Penang state's Deputy Chief Minister P. Ramasamy, himself an ethnic Indian, Tuesday asked Hindraf chairman P. Waythamoorthy to account for RM 700,000 ($245,427), Tamil language Makkal Osai reported.

The Hindraf planned to demand heavy compensation from the British government for the perceived present-day discrimination of the ethnic Indians, a bulk of them Tamil Hindus, who came here during the British colonial era.

A letter to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted on a web site became the cause for the Malaysian government persecuting five Hindraf leaders - M. Manoharan, S. Kengadharan, Vasanth Kumar, P. Uthaya Kumar and Ganabatirau - on charge of sedition.

Waythamoorthy escaped, travelled to India and many countries where Tamil diaspora resides, and eventually to Britain where he lives in self-imposed exile.