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Motive appeared to be revenge
The killers apparently struck sometime after dusk when the family was getting ready for their dinner on the evening prior to New Year’s Eve at their modest home in Nainamadama in the Wennappuwa police division.
Gruesome murder: The victim family
When the police forced their way into the house on Monday afternoon they discovered that the place was empty, the lights were still burning and a tray of stale string hoppers, a dish of dhal and a bowl of coconut sambol lay on the dining table.
A short while later, villagers who had accompanied the police to the house discovered several plastic objects floating inside a lotus pond situated in the vicinity that contained the lifeless bodies of the missing occupants.
The victims were identified as Nalin Hettiarachchi (49), his wife Dr. Punya Kumari Wijesinghe and their children Charuka Gayashan (15) and his sister Piyumi.
The victims had been stabbed and hacked to death with sharp instruments before being dumped into the pond along with rocks as a weight to prevent the bodies from floating to the surface.
The search for the family began on the morning of New Year’s Day when staff and colleagues of the doctor at the Lunuwila Base Hospital became worried over her absence from duty. From the previous evening they had tried in vain to contact the doctor via telephone but with no success and when she failed to turn up at the traditional New Year breakfast on Thursday held in the hospital premises they decided to visit her home.
On reaching the doctor’s home they found it locked with the lights still burning and two vehicles belonging to the family parked in the garage.
Police centered their suspicions on a watcher and his mistress who lived on the same premises which also houses a defunct coir mill owned by the victims.
The vicitms’ home
The pair went missing.
Police Assistant Superintendent (ASP) Thusitha Kumara from the Wennappuwa Division who is heading the probe earlier said the suspicion was on the couple.
Investigators have found out that the coir mill was out of business for the past several months and that the businessman was edging on bankruptcy.
The attackers had removed the gold wedding ring worn by the doctor after cutting off her finger, he added.
| Chief suspect,commits suicide after arrest The chief suspect arrested in connection with the murder committed suicide last afternoon by jumping into the Ma Oya when CID officials were taking him to search for the axe used to commit the killings, police said. The suspect who worked as the watcher of the estate belonging to the victim and the watcher’s mistress were arrested yesterday in connection with the brutal murders on December 30, Police spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana said. The couple had been employed on the estate since November last year. SSP Rohana said CID officials, who took over the case, had questioned the chief suspect and later taken him to Ma Oya,Thoppuwa in the vicinity of the murder scene where the suspect had claimed he threw the murder weapon into. Several pieces of jewellery including a bangle, necklace, two pairs of studs and two mobile phones belonging to the victims were also recovered from the suspects, according to police. Police said the couple had confessed to the crime saying that they had taken revenge on the victims over a dispute in the monthly wages. The woman told police that she had assisted her paramour in the killings. Autopsy reveals girl was raped A medical autopsy performed on the victims has revealed that the 13-year-old girl had been repeatedly raped by the assailants before she was killed. The autopsy carried out by Dr. D.K. Wijeywardene at the Chilaw Hospital also found that the girl had been strangled with a nylon cord and her body later dumped in the pond. The other three victims had been hit on the head with a heavy weapon and later hacked with a sharp instrument, the JMO further ruled. |