Double murder-suicide: Lankan father accused of killing his children

Police officers at Huntingdale in Australia, have opened a murder- suicide investigation into the alleged killing of two children by their Sri Lankan father, who took his own life.

Indika Gunathilaka, and the bodies of his four-year-old daughter and six-yearold son, were found at a home in Essington Street at Huntingdale in the south-eastern part of Perth, on Friday evening.

The bodies were found after Indika’s wife and the children's mother called the Police and said the children had not arrived at a pre-determined location to meet her.

The children's bodies were found in their beds, news reports said. The man was found dead inside a garage at the back.

"The exact cause of death and the circumstances will be thoroughly investigated and this will take some time, but I can tell you at this stage we are treating this incident as a double murder- suicide," a senior Police official was quoted as saying.

In mid-December, Mr Gunathilaka, a town planner, posted a video on Facebook in which he spoke of his own mental health problems and warned others that suicide is 'not the solution'.

"People who have known me well enough for long enough, I would feel quite certain they may not think of me as someone going through depression. But I have recently been diagnosed with depression," he said in the video, which is still on his Facebook memorial page.

“Suicide is possibly not the solution. Reach out to people, try and talk to people, seek help, see what you can do before you make that drastic decision. If you are successful there is no coming back,” he said.