Beggars play hide and seek with potential killers

By Thulasi MUTTULINGAM

The beggar murders seem to have stopped as suddenly as they started. Beggars are returning to their normal livelihood on the streets and have begun to breathe easy again. Almost all those we spoke to claimed to have no idea who were behind the murders or why it had happened.

"We are not afraid, we stay here together until 8.00 in the night and then go home" said a group of three old beggars squatting on a pavement in Bambalapitiya. Not everyone is so fortunate as to have such an option. Right behind them, lying on the wide pavement were an old woman and her son who had lost their shacks on the beach to the tsunami and have been homeless ever since.

They shrug apathetically when asked if they are not afraid to sleep on the pavement. Then, with the same apathy, they call in a cousin of theirs to tell her story; 67 year old Seetha Fernando had narrowly escaped death on April 13, a date she remembers well because it was 'Avurudu'.

She had been sleeping on the pavement outside a certain optician's where she worked as a cleaner and with whose permission she has received by letter to sleep outside on. Around midnight, a huge stone was dropped on her head.

She had woken up with a scream and woken up her cousin in the process. She recalls seeing someone run away but could not attend to it as she was disoriented and bleeding profusely. The cousin took her to Kalubowila hospital immediately.

Operation

"They kept me in the hospital and had to perform an operation on my head on the 19th. It was only on the 30th that the bandages were taken off" She said, showing the bumps still visible on her head.

Seetha feels the person was certainly after her money. Because she had woken up though, he had to run away, without it.

"The Wellawatte police have arrested him now" she said. The person she refers to is the suspect arrested by the Wellawatte police, 66 year old Vianovitage Rupasena.

He was arrested as a suspect for the murder of a 62 year old Muthusamy Thangavelu, whose body was found by the DSI showroom in Wellawatte.

Muthusamy was murdered on April 12. Seetha was attacked on April 13. The attacks were quite likely carried out by the same person, he was finally arrested in the Bambalapitiya area.

Apparently, he was not a beggar himself. A bachelor living alone, he earned some money by carrying lamps in the perahera season but otherwise got by, by extorting money from beggars.

"He didn't look like a typical beggar. He wore clean clothes, was clean and washed and well fed himself but all his clothes, meals and money came from the beggars" said Wellawatte OIC of Crimes, Nalin Sriyanthe.

Apparently, when the police tried to trace the happenings in Muthusamy's life prior to his demise, it came to light that he had moved into Wellawatte only a few days before.

He had been in the habit of begging outside a Bambalapitiya temple and had a scuffle with the suspect over the extraction of his dinner packet. He had packed up his belongings and come to Wellawatte to be free of the menace, only to be tracked down and murdered a few days later.

Lucky break

According to Subinspector Sriyanthe, the deceased was found at 5.30 in the morning, by which time he had been dead for at least five hours. No money was found in his possession though the few handkerchiefs that he had used to tie the money was found.

No stone or heavy object could be found in the vicinity either though the post-mortem later carried out reported death due to head injuries with such a weapon.

The police were conducting inquiries when they struck a lucky break. A prominent beggar leader almost became a casualty himself. He was in the habit of chaining himself to his wheelchair at night, when sleeping.

The attacker in trying to kill him had stumbled over the chain and in the process had woken him up.

The startled attacker had still thrown the stone he carried but it had only grazed the man's temple and not killed him. He was not only able to provide the police with a good description but also advocated the active help of the beggars in police inquiries.

With this, the police were able to go undercover and move as one with the beggars.

"The beggars had started to change their sleeping places with their belongings they gather in one place, usually Bambalapitiya to sleep", said SI Sriyanthe.

"We had four officers moving with this group. After about seven days of the April 12 murder, we saw a man skulking about and then stealthily approaching the sleeping beggars at around 1.00 am.

He fit the description given by different sources and so we arrested him. He pretended to be mentally unstable but he isn't.

He has now accepted that he carried out the murder and attempted murders but says that it was because beggars were a nuisance to society. He has refused to accept it had anything to do with money."

Inquiries

That's just one arrest though. Even after this suspect's arrest, beggar murders have continued elsewhere.

According to police spokesperson Prashantha Jayakody, the police are still conducting 'inquiries' and there have been no 'breakthroughs' apart from the Wellawatte arrest as yet.

A senior police officer who wished not to be named said, 'It is all about money. The beggars make between two to five thousand a day. Obviously they are going to prove easy targets to make easy money. Also, they have their own internal disputes over demarcated areas and beggar mudalalis to whom they have to give a chunk of their earnings. It's a complex problem that needs to be studied well to get to the bottom of it".

The police however do not think that the murders are part of a coordinated effort or serial killings as it were. When it was pointed out that the method of using a heavy stone on the head was an underlying theme of the murders everywhere, SI Sriyanthe said that could be because other weapons like guns or grenades were hardly feasible.

"The police regularly check people walking about late in the night. They can't carry around weapons like that and the noise would also be an issue. It's always easy to find a stone or pole lying somewhere and try to smash the skull with it - this alone doesnot indicate that the same person or group were carrying out the murders."

Meanwhile, the last related murder was on June 29 in Mt. Lavinia. The murder mystery has still not been completely solved by the police but for whatever reason, they have thankfully stopped.