Sri Lankan woman journalist murdered

Former Agence France-Presse journalist Mel Gunasekera was stabbed to death on Sunday after a break-in at her family's home in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, police said.

The body of Gunasekera, who had been working for the international ratings agency Fitch, was discovered by her parents at their house in the Battaramulla neighbourhood after they returned from church, police spokesman Ajith Rohana said.

"We have deployed several investigating teams and we are depending on forensic evidence," Rohana said, adding that no arrests had been made.

Although no one has been arrested for the murder, Rohana said police had taken fingerprints and were studying closed-circuit television footage.

Gunasekera, 40, was an assistant vice president at Fitch's Sri Lankan operation, a position she took up in 2012 after a five-year stint as Colombo correspondent for AFP.

As well as reporting extensively on financial and political affairs in Sri Lanka, she also made several visits as a journalist to the neighbouring Maldives.

She was also the founding editor of Lanka Business Online, which is one of Sri Lanka's best known financial news portals.

 

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