Women become easy targets

Daylight murders of women increase:

Have criminals begun targeting women these days to commit rape, murder and pillage while their spouses are away at work? A horrifying number of murders have been committed during the past few months where innocent women have become victims of gruesome pre-meditated murders.

A number of women have been sexually assaulted and killed whilst their homes were being robbed. Police have found that in most killings, hired assassins have been employed while other murders have been committed by sex perverts. Just look at the number of women murdered during the past few months. It is an obvious indication that women have become targets in recent times. The criminals know that women offer little resistance while being robbed, raped or strangled to death.

A few weeks back a married woman living with her family in the Mutuwal area was beaten to death by a man who entered, her home. Last year a woman teacher was clubbed to death at her home in Nugegoda in the presence of her children.

After committing the murder the assassin boldly had got into a three wheeler taxi parked outside and escaped. In another incident a young girl returning home after work was raped and strangled to death at Mirigama.

In the Kahathuduwa area a young married woman returning home after work at the Dehiwela Municipality was shot to death by hired assassins who got a way in a motor cycle. In Kandy last week a 90 year old woman and her domestic servant was ruthlessly chopped to death with a knife by the caretaker who later committed suicide by hanging himself from a rope.

These cases were highlighted in the local print and the electronic media generating outrage from the public. Except for a few cases we are not sure whether the police was successful in solving the other murders. Sociologists say that erosion of social mores and values had contributed to serious crimes in the country. Are we stuck in a grip of violent crime sweeping across the country?

Hardly three weeks had lapsed after the Mutuwal murder and the Kandy murders were reported in the newspapers. The latest gruesome murder was committed in Seeduwa area where a 63 year old widowed woman was stabbed to death by a gang who had trespassed into her house situated at AirForce Mawatha at Katunayake last week.

The victim was identified as Tilaka Batuwantudawe Mendis (63) the widow of the deceased priest Nelson Mendis. She was the mother of two children who lived with her married daughter and her husband at Katunayake. Both her daughter and her son-in-law are executives employed in the mercantile sector. Her only son is employed in Dubai.

It was a routine thing for her daughter and her son-in-law to leave home together in the morning for work. The couple usually return home around 8.30 p.m. It was a strange coincidence when her son in Dubai rang up his mother around 11.30 a.m. on October 8 to inquire about her health.

He felt strange when she did not answer the telephone. He rang up several times more but strangely the mother did not pick up the telephone. He knew that she hardly went out of the house. Instinct told him that something had gone wrong at home.

The panic stricken son then rang up his sister at her work place afterwards and informed that his mother did not answer the telephone. The daughter too telephoned home several times but her mother had failed to pick up the phone.

She however assumed that her mother would have visited a neighbour, and forgot the matter due to pressure of work. However she and her husband began to worry while they were on their way home.

They phoned home several times, but the mother had not picked up the phone. It was around 8.30 p.m. when the couple returned home. What they noticed first was that someone had opened the front door. Usually their mother kept the door closed.

Sensing imminent danger, the couple rushed in and found their mother's blood spattered body lying in a corner of the kitchen in a pool of dried blood. There were several stab wounds on the neck, head and the body.

The eerie scene was so horrible the couple cupped their hands to their contorted faces in disbelief. By now their anxiety had given way to misery, despair and anger. Who could have done this ghastly thing to their beloved mother they thought in silence for a moment.

Seeduwa police investigating the murder said they suspect two or more persons to have committed the crime. Meanwhile the Police Finger Print Bureau officers who visited the home had found several finger prints on the house.

OIC Seeduwa Police Station, Chief Inspector Saman Segera and OIC Crimes Sub Inspector Jagath Nishantha have questioned several persons in this regard. According to Seeduwa police, the most strange thing was that no body living close by had heard the cries of the old lady while being attacked.

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