Solving a crime with a missing body

The Kalattawa double murder case was “sensational”, says Mr. Upali Seneviratne, pointing out that it was the “one and only” case in Sri Lanka and the “second” in the world at that time, where there was no body.

There was no corpus delicti, which means that there was no concrete evidence of a crime such as a corpse. For there were only bone fragments, a belt buckle and the frame of a bag, he says. “The bone fragments were of P.K.D. Perera but we never found Julius Sandrasagara’s body even though we literally dug up the whole of Anuradhapura.”

According to Mr. Seneviratne the only eye witness to the murder of P.K.D. Perera was Punchi Bandage Jayasena who was about 18 years old. He had been at the wadiya in Kalattawa when Perera was brought by Zoysa and Kalu Albert and Willie Mama had made him drunk. They had then assaulted him, blown off the Petromax lamp plunging the area into darkness, run him over with a tractor driven by Kalu Albert, poured two cans of petrol over his body and set it on fire.

The most difficult task, which Mr. Seneviratne calls “Herculean”, was to protect these vital witnesses, Wilson (who was part of the car burial team) and Jayasena. It had been carried out by Sergeants Weerawardena and Sediris, while Jayasena’s statement had been recorded by IP Gamini Weerasinghe. The key expert witnesses whose evidence swung the verdict in the case were Professor of Anatomy, Prof. Lester Jayawardane; Colombo Judicial Medical Officer (JMO), Dr. W.D.L. Fernando; and Government Analyst, C. Coomaraswamy.

While Wilson was sent into hiding in a colony in Kantale, Jayasena the “only” witness to Perera’s murder who had received many death threats had been found employment in a boutique in Ratnapura.

To complicate the lives of the investigators, Jayasena had got embroiled in another case, when he playfully threw a firebrand at a co-worker which had hit him on the head, killing him. It was a clear case of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and he was in custody when he gave evidence in the Kalattawa case, says Mr. Seneviratne, adding that the seven jurors were also kept under close surveillance.