Toddler in tug-of-love
In a twist that could have been taken out of a mystery novel, a child is lost and found safe and sound
By Marisa de Silva and Vidushi Seneviratne
A young family and a few of their neighbours and friends go to the Galle Face Green on Sunday, September 15 at about 7.30 in the evening, to relax and enjoy the kite festival. Little do they know that within half an hour, one of their worst nightmares is about to become a reality. Little 22-month-old Dilanka Madushan, lovingly called Samitha by family and friends, disappears.

Responding to his persistent cries for an ice cream, his father, U.G. Susantha Jayalath (27), a container driver, had taken him by the hand towards the nearby ice-cream truck, whilst his mother and friends sat on a bench close by.

Jayalath claimed that at the foot of the short flight of steps leading to the ice cream vendor, Samitha had pulled his hand away and refused to go up the stairs. At this point, he had left him there for a moment whilst he went up the steps to buy the ice cream. However, when he turned around a minute later, his child was missing.

Frantically, he had run back to his wife and asked her where their son was. She had replied that she thought the child was with him. Clad in a red and white checked shirt and shorts, he should have been easy to spot except that it was nearly 8.15 p.m., when the incident occurred.

The parents then reported the child's disappearance to the police post at the Green. Responding efficiently, the police and the parents, together with family and friends, searched every inch of the Green for him, but their search which lasted until dawn, was to no avail.

The reality was not what it seemed to be. In a five-day drama, the child was found on Thursday unharmed but the victim of a love triangle.

Earlier, when we walked into their seemingly close knit and very supportive community living in a 'Watte' in Grandpass, their home was filled with neighbours and family.

Married for just two years, Samitha is their only child, said K.U. Anusha Geethanjali (26), who appealed to the community and the abductors to please bring her son back to her. "Samitha still relies on breast milk," she said and will hardly take anything else. As such she was anxious for the well being of her son.

'Babawe aye hamba vunoth mate athi, thave mokowath epa' she said then. (If I get my child back, that's enough. We don't want anything else)

Urgent appeals were made daily, through the media by both the parents and the police to return the child to his parents. The entire community felt the need to do all they could to reunite the little boy with his family. Society did indeed play a vital role in the story as it took a strange twist, for on Thursday, September 19, at approximately 7.45 a.m. IP S.B. Diyakelinawala, Officer in Charge (OIC) of the Veyangoda Police, received a tip-off that a child fitting the description of Samitha was in fact residing in a house that had been rented out to a couple. The Police immediately followed up on the lead and despatched a team to the place to find Samitha, his father and another woman in the house.

The woman, Shirani Dharmasena of Kurunegala, a mother of one with an ongoing divorce case had attempted to escape by taxi, only to be caught again in the Warakapola area. She had carried out the father's instructions to come to Galle Face that evening and take the child to the house that they had rented in Veyangoda, said IP Diyakelinawala.

The OIC added that the father's motive seemed to be his intense unhappiness at home and the alleged ill-treatment of his son by his wife. He was allegedly "under his wife's thumb" and couldn't take it any more. Thus, he had decided to run away with his son, so that he and Shirani could live a better life with Samitha.

We learnt that the OIC of the Fort Police, Jayantha Wickramasingha, after conducting a five-hour interrogation of the father, mother and the other woman was making an appeal to the magistrate to allow the child to be in the custody of his rightful mother. He was also in the process of compiling a charge sheet against Susantha Jayalath for making a false complaint and aiding to abduct.Charges of abduction would also be brought against Shirani Dharmasena, the police said.

He added that the couple and the boy were to leave for Padaviya that day, to start life afresh.

Little Samitha is to be produced before a medical officer shortly.

What is obvious in this 'kidnap' is that the poor child was a hapless pawn in an adult world.

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