Uthayan is one of the most popular newspapers in Sri Lankan Tamil community, now with Uthayan epaper, accessing and reading the newspaper has become even easier and convenient for the fans. Going online in the form of Uthayan epaper is a recent move, as the printed version of this Tamil language newspaper is being printed since 1985. However, it gained the popularity that it has till today, from the middle of 1990s. Now Uthayan is considered as the true people representative of Jaffna population.

Sri Lankan troubles were not hidden from the world during their civil war against Tamil tigers. Even during that battle, the paper continued its operations and is publishing successfully to this day. However, the changing situation is not that good for the paper, as even today, the attacks on Uthayan journalists or anyone associated with the printed paper or Uthayan epaper are very common. Many people associated with the Uthayan group have been murdered by the armed forces.

Among the attacks on Uthayan, worst incident was the attack that took place on 2nd of May, 2006. This was not only an attack on the newspaper but also on the journalism and concept of freedom of speech in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government is criticized heavily due to this, but unfortunately there is no stop to these ongoing attacks. It cannot be said with certainty, whether the attack was made intentionally, but ironically Uthayan came under attack exactly on World Press Freedom day. Two persons from Uthayan staff were killed during the incident, and two were seriously wounded and many other got wounds of lower severity. In fact, both the wounded persons are paralyzed to this day and are not capable of taking care of them anymore. The poor souls are now dependent on others to accomplish even minor day-to-day tasks like eating, washing, excreting. According to details of the incident, a bunch of gunmen (allegedly from government agency) reached the Uthayan office on the unfortunate evening at 8:00 p.m. Sri Lankan time. They asked about the whereabouts of the editor and chief reporter. On refusal of the employees presented at the time, they started an open fire and started killing people without any discrimination. Many were injured and the loss to the property was also reported. Although more than five years have been passed since then, but still no compensation has been provided by the government for the deceased, injured people and against the loss of property.