Did the love triangle lead to hanging?

It was a bright morning with sunlight filtering through the foliage of tall trees in Kadigawa in the Eppawela area. The leaves on trees rustled gently in the breeze as farmers went about their business during the dawn break. Strangely some people who gathered below a tall Margosa tree, were gazing upwards towards the sky in an awkward manner.

The men and women were looking at an eerie sight where a man and two young girls were found hanging from the Margosa tree from a height of about thirty five feet.

Their bodies were dangling from a tree as a woman wept uncontrollably below the tree. Kawamma claimed that the bodies of the two girls were her two daughters. She claimed the man whose body was found hanging from a tree would have killed her two daughters.

Kawamma told police that on December 10 morning before setting out for work she looked around for her younger daughter in her home. As she wasn’t there she looked for her in the adjoining garden and found three people hanging from a tree.

The peaceful atmosphere of Kadigawa was shattered when people heard of the horrible news that spread like wildfire in the area. Curious people who heard the news rushed to the spot to get a glimpse of the three bodies dangling from the branches of the tree.

The man’s body was found hanging from a higher branch of the tree and the bodies of girls from a lower branch.

The girls’ mother sobbingly narrated her tale of woe to those present and said that she suspected foul play.

Kawamma was a 42 year old woman and was a single parent. There weren’t very many people to console her on the deaths of her two daughters. Her husband died almost seven years ago and she had to fight an uphill battle to feed and nurse her two daughters and the youngest son.

The children were below ten years when their father died. She eked out a living by finding employment as a labourer in a paddy mill in the area.

With her meagre income she fed and clothed her three children and sent them to school.

Despite a rough and tumble life she was determined to give her children a basic education so that they could carry on with their lives when they grow up in life.

With sheer determination and grit she fought back all the odds that stood in her way. Some villagers who gathered around the Margosa tree expressed suspicion that they committed suicide and said it was homicide.

The mother told the police that she was the first to notice her daughters’ hanging.

Some began to whisper in secrecy about the circumstances that led to the mysterious deaths of the young man and the two teenage girls.

The deceased persons were identified as Dilshani Kumari (17) Gangani Isanka(15) and Ruwan Prema Jayantha (27) a deserter from the army. He had been in the Commando regiment as a soldier.

He lived in the adjoining village. It was revealed that the former soldier had a passionate affair with kawamma the mother. While living at her house he later fell in love with her eldest daughter Dilshani Kumari who was only 15 years old at that time.

While having a secret love affair with Dilshani Kumari, he eloped with her, that angered her mother.

The Eppawela police arrested the army deserter on a complaint made by the mother that her 15-years-old daughter was raped by him. Police later filed a case against him before the Thambuttegama Courts for sexually molesting an underaged girl.

Ruwan Prema Jayantha spent some time in remand prison and was granted bail later. Thereafter he came to live at Dilshani Kumari’s home once again. Prema Jayantha quarrelled often with Dilshani Kumari’s mother and with her relatives on various domestic matters. On numerous occasions he threatened to kill them relating an incident which happened in the area some time ago.

On December 7 Dilshani’s mother lodged a complaint at the Eppawela police station saying that Prema Jayantha threatened to kill her following a quarrel at home.

Police advised her to keep away from home and to put up the night at a relative’s home.

She took the advice seriously and went to live at a relative’s home for two nights along with her younger daughter and the son. However things took a different turn following the complaint made at the Eppawela police station.

The eldest daughter Dilshani fell out with her mother and went to live elsewhere. Saddened by the fact that her sister wasn’t there, Gangani Issanka the younger daughter too left her mother and joined her elder sister at a relative’s home.

The Eppawela police discovered several letters in the trouser pocket of the ex-soldier when his body was lowered to the ground.

They also learnt that Gangani Isanka had purchased the nylon thread used to hang themselves from a boutique in the village, according to witnesses. However rumours began to circulate in the village that the ex soldier was in intimate terms with Ganagani Isanka (15) as well.

According to police, the girls were in the habit of climbing trees and were used to dizzy heights. “The two girls and the man having climbed the tree would have tied a noose around their neck and hanged themselves.

The motive for committing suicide was probably due to desperation. The two girls felt that they could not share the same man in life.

This would have driven them to suicide,” police saidOIC Eppawela Inspector Wijaya Kumarasiri and a police party who visited the scene of suicide found a folded mat, three pairs of slippers and a knife in a jungle close by.

The Acting Magistrate Thambuttegama B. Lewke Bandara and JMO of the Anuradhapura Hospital Dr. D.L. Waidyaratne were present when the three bodies were brought down from the tree.

The Acting Magistrate ordered the JMO to hold the autopsy and submit a report to court.