Alleged love affair led to killing

Killing of schoolboy in Udawalawe

Police conducting investigations of the schoolboy Hasitha Eranjan Lakshan of Miriswelpotha, in Kolambageara in Udawalawe suspect that a love affair had led to the killing.

He had been waylaid and hacked to death when he was on his way to Miriswelpotha Vidyalaya to attend a tuition class and his body dumped in a forest reserve.

A senior police official said the victim was a clever student in school, a prefect, a member of the school band. He had also commanded recognition in the area as a well disciplined boy.

The Embilipitiya Additional Magistrate Kanchana. N. de Silva who visited the scene and held the preliminary magisterial inquiry requested those present to provide information leading to the arrest of the suspects.

However, the police have focused attention on gossip among young men in the area. They had received information that a trishaw driver of the area had an animosity with the schoolboy for being in love with a girl whom he had wooed in vain. Another story said that a girl who had been in love with a trishaw driver had deserted him and fallen in love with the schoolboy and that the trishaw driver concerned had threatened the latter to give up his relations with the girl.

During investigations police arrested four young men between 17 and 21 years of age and seized a trishaw allegedly used by them for the killing. Police said the blood stains in the trishaw had been washed in a stream flowing through a tract of paddy fields.

Police believe that the schoolboy was killed at another location and the body dumped in the teak forest. A senior police official said the police team was deployed to search for the knife used in the killing on information that it had been thrown into the cane sugar plantation near the forest reserve.

OIC Udawalawe police IP W.M.J.Bandara is conducting further investigations on the instructions of ASP D.W.C.Dharmaratne