Kalattawa murder: Our picture prompts a reporter’s tale

It was all about the photograph that appeared in the PLUS of the Sunday Times of October 7 in the piece on the Kalattawa double murder headlined ‘Enter two saronged johnnies’.

“I too am in the photograph taken in Anuradhapura in the late 1960s,” said the caller who telephoned the Sunday Times.

He was not a ‘saronged johnny’ but a young man in black trousers and white shirt in the photograph – second from the right -- who provided a few more very interesting nuggets of information to us.

Not only does 74-year-old Daya Wijesekera who now lives in Pita Kotte identify all the others in the photograph except one, he also added more colour to this sensational case that gripped Anuradhapura then.

Daya was the very powerful crime reporter of ‘Davasa’ of the Independent Newspapers Ltd. group, which had its home in Hulftsdorp and was run by the Gunasenas of Gunasena Bookshop fame.

Daya, was sent from the Davasa Head Office to report from the ground. So he headed for Anuradhapura and more or less shadowed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) team during the day, having a beer or two with them in the evening.

The photo, he says, if his memories are right, was taken at Tissa Wewa because the CID team was staying in a government bungalow close by. From the right are: CID Police Constable U.A. Piyasena; Daya himself; CID Sergeant M.H.P. Fernando; another person whose name he cannot recall; Davasa Public Relations Officer Narada Disasekera; and the Anuradhapura correspondent for Davasa Lal Chandrakumarage.

CID’s Fernando and Piyasena had gone as undercover agents to crack the case.

Narada was in the sacred city to organize a Bhakthi Gee programme and do you know that he sang the popular ‘Galana Gangaki Jeevithe’ along with Nanda Malini for the first colour Sinhala film, ‘Ranmuthu Duwa’, says Daya, adding that he is also the father of well-known actor Saranga Disasekera.

Those were the days of ‘trunk-calls’ and Daya would have to wait three hours after booking such a call in Anuradhapura to talk to the Davasa office in Colombo to give his story about the developments in the Kalattawa case for the next day’s newspaper. They had the highest circulation in Anuradhapura then, for everyday there was a story and the readers would lap up a ball-by-ball account of the happenings.

“There were few telephones around then but those who had phones didn’t allow me to use their phones because they were close to tavern owner and accused Alfred de Zoysa. It was only M.A. Sirisena who owned the Isurumuniya Beheth Shalawa in the market who allowed me to use his phone,” he says.

An incident in the Anuradhapura courthouse is still vivid in Daya’s mind. The handcuffed suspects, Zoysa, W. Piyadasa alias Kalu Albert and W. Fernando alias Willie Mama, were being brought along the corridor when the Lake House photographer Chandragupta Weerawardena using the box camera of those times was clicking photos. Zoysa

penna gaman kakulen gehuwwa, says Daya, creating the image of Zoysa jumping forward and kicking out, sending the camera flying.

“Camera eka kude-kudu,” he laughs, adding that the camera shattered into smithereens.

Meanwhile CID constable Piyasena’s family contacted the Sunday Times to clarify that his name was Udage Arachchige Piyasena (U.A. Piyasena) and not J.M. Piyasena as stated in the original article. He died in 2013.