Gruesome killing allegedly by schoolgirl shocks Batticaloa community:

Love affair leads to parents’ killing

by S. Selvakumar

Thatchana aged 16, studying for the GCE O Level examination allegedly got her parents killed by her fiance and his friends simply because they opposed her love affair with a classmate. News of the killing of the wealthy businessman Sivaguru Ragu 48, and his wife Sundaramoorthy Vipra 41, in Chenkaladi on April 7 midnight shocked the entire Batticaloa based business community and set a poser to the guardians of the law.

Nobody at any stage suspected the schoolgirl would get her parents killed. Police, too, could not believe it until the ace crime buster and Senior DIG Eastern Province Pujitha Jayasundera who headed the investigation looked at the double murder from a different angle as a last resort which did pay off.

It is noteworthy to write a few lines about the cop who could be described as an asset to the Sri Lanka Police since he has brought to book the culprits in many unsolved crimes.

The shooting down of a young doctor at Karandeniya in the South a few months ago set a poser to the local Police who failed to connect anybody to the killing and groped in the dark.

Dr. Jayasinghe was a popular medical practitioner. One night he closed his dispensary around 10 p.m. and walked to his car parked nearby when two gunmen riding a motorbike sprayed him with bullets from a T-56 rifle and escaped into the night.

Senior DIG Jayasundera was despatched from Colombo to Karandeniya to investigate the crime. His first thought was who could have killed the doctor who was so popular among the locals. Residents of Karandeniya called him Dostara Honda Hitha because he treated the poor free of charge. When he ordered for reports patients usually turned to a laboratory in the town. Soon the doctor realised the reports from the laboratory were inaccurate and decided to establish his own laboratory.

Jayasundera focused his investigations from the angle of business rivalry. The owner of the laboratory told a friend, a Major in the Army, of his business dwindling and the two decided to get rid of Dr. Jayasinghe. The Major obtained the services of two soldiers in a camp in the North. The two men carrying a loaded T-56 rode in a bike from the North to the South and carried out the killing. All four involved in the doctor’s killing are now in remand custody and non summary proceedings are being conducted before the Balapitiya Magistrate.

In the Chenkaladi incident,when everything else failed to point a finger at any suspect, Jayasundera thought of the most unbelievable. After the local Police recorded statements from the kith and kin of the deceased couple, the DIG got down to work. He knew the girl had been admonished by her parents for having an affair with a classmate. Though this was no reason to kill the parents the DIG did not abandon the thought.

He began monitoring the movements of Thatchana, the least suspected of masterminding the killings of her parents. Her contacts since the brutal murder pointed to the fact that she continued her affiliations with her classmate lover and two other classmates. They were seen together frequently. Their telephone conversations were monitored and it was alleged that Thatchana arranged to kill her parents through her lover and the two classmates. On the day of the killing chicken curry was served for dinner at their home. Thatchana mixed some sleeping tablets in the chicken curry. Her elder sister while eating complained that the curry tasted bitter.

Her parents, Ragu and his wife also complained that something was wrong with the curry.

Thatchana skipped dinner and preferred not to sleep with her sister in their room in the large house. Instead, she slept in her grandmother’s house in the neighbourhood. However, before she left for her grandmother’s home she made sure to keep the rear door of the house unlocked for her friends to gain easy access.

On the fateful day after midnight her fiance and the two friends armed with clubs and knives entered Ragu’s residence through the back door and walked straight into the master bedroom where the couple was fast asleep. They dealt several blows on the heads of the sleeping couple and cut their necks and body with the sharp weapons they brought with them and escaped into the night before the couple could raise cries. Both victims were dead on the spot, so that even the elder sister sleeping in another room could not raise cries to alert the neighbours.

However, on realising something unusual the elder daughter peeped into her parents’ room and switching on the lights saw the gory sight of her parents in a pool of blood. The neighbours rushed in and took the bodies to the Hospital. Thatchana was a silent onlooker showing no emotion whatsoever on seeing the bodies of her parents.

After a few days of thorough investigations, failing to point a finger at any suspect, DIG Jayasundera focussed his probe to monitor Thatchana. By April 12 he started questioning her and on intensive questioning she spilled the beans. Thatchana with her boyfriend and the two accomplices were arrested. Statements were recorded from shopkeepers who sold the knives used in the killing.

Why did the 16-year-old girl preparing for her O Level examination wish her father and mother dead. Because, as any other parents they were opposed to her falling in love at this tender age. They had admonished her and suspected that she had misbehaved with her boyfriend .

This had hurt her and she had thought the only way to continue her affair was to remove all obstacles in the path of love. Here it was her parents who were the obstacles and she cast aside all humanity and other values and held her love in esteem and suggested to her dear lover to kill her parents.He too thought that Ragu and Vipra were the obstacles to their affair and agreed to Thatchana’s suggestion.

However, their plot was so amateurish in the eyes of seasoned cops and it was child’s play to solve the crime. It took about four days for the sleuths to bust the crime because they least expected a 16-year-old girl to plan the murders of her parents just because they opposed her love affair. Humanity has degraded to such low level. At first Police pursued all other angles and when everything else failed they questioned Thatchana.

Thatchana and her three classmates were produced before the Eravur Circuit Court Magistrate T.Karunakaran last week and remanded till April 24.