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29 March 2024

Sri Lankan in Chennai commits suicide after killing mother, wife and daughter

Published
By Correspondent

A 48-year old Sri Lankan Tamil in the southern Indian city of Chennai committed suicide by jumping in front of a suburban train near Pazhavanthangala on Tuesday, after killing his mother, wife and daughter by slitting their throats, the ‘Daily Mirror’ reported.

C. Sundaram, who according to his friends was in debt, had come from Sri Lanka to Chennai 30 years ago and was settled in Thillai Ganga Nagar in Adambakkam.

His friends told Times of India that he was into trading in imported and running a travel agency and had suffered losses.

He had taken his family to a theme park and to a temple on Monday. After returning home, at around 4am, he slit the throat of his mother Thangamma, 76, and then of his wife Chitra, 48 and his daughter Tamira, 13, who had resisted his attempt to kill her after which she had been stabbed eight times.

He left the door of the house open and flung himself in front of a suburban train plying between Tambaram and Beach by going to the railway tracks near the Pazhavanthangal railway station.

Finding a mobile phone near the body, the railway police called the last-called number and the person who answered the call identified the owner of the phone and gave police the victim’s address.

The police team which visited the first floor apartment of “Sundaresan”,  found the door open and the bodies lying in a pool of blood.

Suspect commits suicide inside police cell

A 44-year old Sri Lankan suspect from Kotahena, Colombo, allegedly committed suicide inside a cell at the Bambalapitiya police station in the early hours on Monday, ‘The Island’ reported.

He had been arrested on charges of stealing vehicle parts such as wipers and side mirrors near the Bambalapitiya flats around 5.20am, police spokesman SP Buddhika Siriwarena said.

Later, he had made use of a piece of cloth, given to wipe the floor after he split tea on it, to hang himself.

The SP said the Hulftsdorp Magistrate and the Judicial Medical Officer of the Colombo National Hospital visited the cell.

Crimes Division OIC of the Bambalapitiya police Inspector Anusha Rupasinghe said  he had confessed that he was a drug addict and  committed thefts as he needed money to buy drugs.

Inspector Rupasinghe added that the suspect had been in custody for the same offence in 2011.

‘Wallapatta’ worth SLRs200m seized

A consignment of herbs called “Wallapatta”, worth SLRs200 million, was seized by police Special Task Force (STF) during a raid in the Kolonnawa area in the suburbs of Colombo on Monday night, ‘The Island’ reported.

The herbs included 13,489kg of ‘Gyrinops Walla’, used to make expensive perfumes and 6kg of sandalwood, a spokesman for STF said, adding that these valuable herbs were recovered from two houses, on a tip off received by its headquarters.

He said that the herbs had been readied for export by four Sri Lankans and two Indians who have been arrested and handed over to Wellampitiya police station.

He further said that once infected by fungi, a substance called agarwood could be produced from ‘Gyrinops Walla’, or Wallapatta, which fetches high priced in countries where they are burned as incense and used in the perfume production.

The sweet smelling gum like substance of Gyrinops Walla is used to manufacture non-alcoholic perfumes in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, West Asia and Europe. One kilogramme of the gum like substance costs over $25,000.

The spokesman said that Gyrinops Walla, which has been named in the International Agreement for Conservation, was an endangered herb found in the wet zone forests near Adam’s Peak.