It all began at a Cancer clinic in the central hill capital of Kandy on October 18.
A woman had travelled from Dambulla to this clinic seeking treatment, but failed to return home.
Her anxious husband and other relatives mounted a massive search for her and the police alerted islandwide.
After 15 days, she returned to her native home at Dambula, and this is what she had to say. She claimed that, while at the clinic in Kandy, she was approached by two men claiming to be doctors from South India, and offered her medical assistance free of charge in that country.
She went on to say that, later she was taken by van to an undisclosed location, and kept virtual prisoner along with four other women.
There, a group of persons dressed in surgeon’s garb intended to operate on her in this clandestine clinic, to remove her vital organs which fetched high prices in India.
She then claimed that, finally, she was able to escape via a ventilator, with the help of a sympathetic employee of the clinic. “I later boarded a night train from a station I cannot recall and found myself at Colombo Fort. There, I begged of a couple to give me Rs 500, and with this money I travelled back to Dambulla,” she concluded.
Her claims, which were given wide publicity in the local and foreign media, had several specially trained police officers investigating them.
After two months of painstaking investigations, this is what the police found out, and made available to the media yesterday.
The real story is that, “Instead of visiting the clinic, the woman had travelled with a lover to the sacred city of Polonnaruwa and booked into a local motel.”
“Late that same night, the couple had decided to leave the motel and head for Dambulla, where they were picked up by a police mobile patrol, and could not explain the purpose of their presence in the area.”
“Thereafter, they were taken to the police station and subsequently, produced in court and charged for loitering, under the Vagrant’s Ordinance, and remanded for 14 days,” Police Superintendent (SP) Ajith Rohana told the Sunday Times.
“There were no South Indian doctors or clandestine clinics. It was her fabricated story to explain her whereabouts for the 14 days she spent in remand prison”, “In the meantime, much public money and police time spent on a dead trail also affected the image of the country. These so-called organ grabs are only known in other Asian and African third world countries. Sri Lanka has never fallen in to that frame.
That is the reason we were adamant to get to the bottom of the whole thing”, he said.
The con woman was re-arrested, produced in court and sentenced to six months rigorous imprisonment, suspended for 25 years, for making a false complaint to police. |
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