Toddler abandoned

Police searching for breakthrough in the mystery...

By Manjula FERNANDO

It was just a hazy outline at first. As the tiny shadow came in to full view, it seemed she was running towards the light. The light came from a private bus’ headlamps that flashed in the darkness of the early dawn.

Tharindi with her mother Nilani

The time was around 4.30 am on August 27 and the place was near the ninth mile post on the Rakwana - Deniyaya road. It was an isolated hilly area surrounded by tea cultivations with no sign of a living being in sight. The Kolonna - Colombo private bus which was speeding on the road which was devoid of any traffic whatsoever, came to a screeching stop. The tiny figure was standing on the road, framed by the beam and the few commuters in the private bus looked at each other in alarm. It was a child! A toddler to be precise, who should not have been left alone without the supervision of a guardian even inside the safety of a house. All strained their eyes to catch a glimpse of any adult who could have been so reckless as to let this child go astray, running towards a speeding bus.

The terrified child was crying uncontrollably and their search to find any guardian or parent nearby was in vain. Except for the child's cries there was only the roar of the bus engine and the whispering of the commuters. There was not a soul to be seen or heard any where....

Although her parents or guardians seemed to have lost interest in her, the strangers gathered around her sympathetically and tried to get her to talk, to find out what may have happened to her. But the child was inconsolable. A gentleman who appeared to be in his forties took charge of the child and the bus took off with the crying toddler. It stopped, sometime later, at the Rakwana police station.

Who was this girl, found abandoned at the foot of the Sinharaja forest? It took the Police sometime to trace her family - and her story.

Tharindi Nawanjana was born two and a half years ago to Nilani Wijetunga (29) of Nivithigala. She lived with her mother and father in her maternal grandparents' house, two kilometres off the Nivithigala town. The grandparents owned tea cultivations in the area and the family was well-respected among the community.

Illicit affair

But their happiness was shortlived. Tharindi's father started an illicit affair with a woman in the neighbourhood. Eight months after the girl was born, he left this cute little bundle of joy and her mother and eloped with his new-found love.

It was the beginning of their tragedy. Nilani lived with her daughter and parents for over an year in the same house. Still young and hoping to find someone to share her life, she started looking for a suitable partner through the marriage proposal columns in Sunday Sinhala papers.

She met Kumara early this year via one such advertisement. He claimed that he was raising a six-year-old son alone after his wife perished in the Boxing Day tsunami. Nilani believed him. A resident in Colombo, Kumara became a frequent visitor to her place.

This is the story from then on, according to Nilani's elder sister, whom the Sunday Observer contacted last week. “He said he will look after my sister's daughter like his own. He did not say that he disliked Tharindi at all. "He used to take the child and my sister out in the car. He bought a car when my sister sold her plot of tea cultivation, a three-acre land, for Rs. 2 million. He must have got the money to buy this car from Nilani."

“We did not like her selling the ancestral land, so there was bitterness and fights over this issue. I believe Kumara forced my sister to sell that land. He must have taken her money. I am not sure if Nilani actually agreed to the idea of disposing of the child. She truly loved and cared for her daughter when she was with us."

The police are now trying to trace the whereabouts of Tharindi's mother and Kumara. On August 16, sometime after the land was sold, Kumara took the child and Nilani, and went away. They had sworn not to return to her parents' house ever again. He had implied that they were going to Homagama. Nothing was heard of them afterwards. Nilani's mother had also lodged a complaint with the Nivithigala police.

When the child surfaced in Rakwana, the Police traced her to Nivithigala.

Despite the grandmother's willingness to take the girl into her custody, the child was put under probation care and was sent to a State-run orphanage.

Tharindi had been able to talk in her baby language when Kumara took them away last month. But trauma has made her virtually dumb.

"She does not talk now. She can't even say 'Amma'," Rakwana Police OIC Inspector Mahinda Ariyasena told the Sunday Observer.

According to her aunt, the child had called her mother 'Amma' and got used to calling Kumara 'Appachchi'. After a pleasure ride in Kumara's car, she would run to her aunt and say “Apachchi took me in the car”. But her ability to speak has been lost after the recent experience which must have been dreadful for a child of her age. Tharindi's grandmother and aunt asked for Tharindi's custody when the case was heard by the Rakwana Magistrate on September 8, but the police, knowing the suspect is still at large and may try to cause some harm or kidnap her, had advised them to keep the child under the care of the orphanage.

Mother's role

The police have not been able to ascertain if the child was abandoned there by Kumara or if her mother had also been involved in the act.

The investigators are trying to find how the child came to be in such an isolated area; whether Kumara had tried to get rid of the child there or if she had been left there to be found by someone.

"There were no indications of bodily harm to the child, and other than the trauma suffered due to her experience, she appeared to be in good health," Inspector Ariyasena said.

Rakwana Police OIC Inspector Mahinda Ariyasena

If she had been left in the jungle for a long time, she may not have been in that condition, he said, indicating that she could have fallen victim to a predatory animal.

The investigations so far have unearthed that Kumara is a fraudster who had married several women in a similar manner.

To prove that he had a six-year-old child, as claimed, he had brought a child along with him to Nilani's parents' house."I have never seen the kid, but he had brought him once to my parents’ house. We don't even know if the boy was actually his own," Nilani's sister said.

The police are now conducting investigations using Kumara's phone numbers. Nilani's sister and the police had been able to talk to him over the phone several times.

But their attempts to talk to Nilani on his phone had failed so far. Kumara maintained that Nilani does not wish to talk to anyone of her family. "I fear that he may have done some harm to my sister. He has stopped answering the phone.

He has switched it off," Nilani's sister said. When this paper went to press, the police were still trying to pick the pieces of the puzzle and solve the mystery of the abandoned toddler.