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‘They say it’s a mistake, but it’s at the cost of my husband’s life’ An innocent man is dead. In a country which boasts that even convicted criminals are not hanged but kept for life in jail, a man is taken into custody on suspicion, walks into a remand prison on June 29 and is carried out five days after, hardly conscious. He is dead two days later. When The Sunday Times met 55-year-old Sunil Perera’s family yesterday, they were still in shock as to what had shattered their lives. His wife Chitra is making arrangements for his funeral to be held tomorrow. The three sons who are abroad, one in England and the other two in America have been informed and one has already arrived. The family’s trauma began on June 28 when rumours spread like wildfire that schools maybe targeted for a bomb attack and fear gripped the people. Sunil, who owns a small business of providing decorations including balloons for functions, was at home in Pita Kotte. However, his assistant, Gamini Munaweera was at the Lady Ridgeway Children’s Hospital with his little son, to get a plaster cast off. The Dialog mobile 0773508173 that Sunil had bought in his name to conduct business deals, was with Gamini.
Around mid-morning, Gamini frantically phoned Sunil that the Ratnapura Police contacted him on the mobile, claiming that Mihindu College had received a bomb threat from that mobile. The police wanted Gamini to call the school and sort out the matter. But Gamini didn’t do that. Sunil then told Gamini to come home immediately and after consulting Chitra advised him to lodge a complaint with the Mirihana Police. When Gamini was there, a Ratnapura Police party which arrived at Sunil’s home had gone in search of Gamini to Mirihana but taken him in for questioning only when he came back to Pita Kotte. “When I came back from work, my husband was upset that Gamini had been taken by the police. We had dinner around 10 and went to bed,” says Chitra, a manager at a top pharmaceutical company in Colombo. But the ordeal for the Perera couple was just about to begin. “At about 11.30 p.m. the bell rang,” explains Chitra. An officer and three policemen were on their doorstep and wanting to take Sunil to Ratnapura to give a statement. “Even though I pleaded with them that I will bring him there in the morning, they took him in the night,” says Chitra, amidst silent tears. She then followed the police with her driver in her car, to be told at the Police Station that Sunil and Gamini would be produced in court the next day. Next morning Chitra and also Gamini’s family had gone to the Ratnapura Magistrate’s Court and hired lawyers. By the time Sunil and Gamini were produced before the Magistrate it had been around 3 p.m. and several other lawyers in the court and some policemen had surrounded the Magistrate and put pressure, saying, “Mevata epa denne ne”. (No bail is given for this). The two were then remanded till July 13 and taken to the Kuruwita remand prison. “Our lawyers were unable to say much, they were helpless,” says Chitra. Back in Colombo, on June 30, it was Chitra’s difficult task to get a detailed bill from Dialog, with red tape and formalities taking precedence, even though she had a letter signed by her husband. “I was sent from one officer to another,” she says explaining that giving up in despair, she was on the way home when finally, Dialog decided “this was a genuine case” and issued the details. Chitra immediately faxed the information to their lawyer in Ratnapura, who in turn took it to the Police Station. The bill proves that only two calls had been made from the mobile on June 28 – one at 10.52 a.m. and the other at 11.06 a.m. Both were to Sunil’s residence phone. The Ratnapura Police, however, were awaiting the details of the phone calls received by the SLT phone of Mihindu College. In Ratnapura on July 1, Chitra and her relatives were shocked to see Sunil’s condition, because he was helped in by two others when they went to see him. “Sunil couldn’t recognize me,” says Chitra, with tears welling up in her eyes and sobs wracking her body. “Something had happened to him. He was in shock.” Sunil’s cousin immediately met the Chief Jailor and pleaded with them to show Sunil to a doctor because he was having diabetes. The cousin had also got through to some organization in Colombo but when they spoke to the prison authorities they had been told there was no assault. “Saturday was a terrible day for me,” laments Chitra. Sunday being a holiday, they were unable to do anything but once again on Monday, July 3, they were back again in Ratnapura, with the police filing a motion just before lunch for the release of both Sunil and Gamini. But when the desperate family took a letter from the court registrar to the Kuruwita Prisons Superintendent, stating: “Nidos kota nidhahas karana ladi” they had been told it was not valid. That day Sunil had been carried in by two others. “He was in a terrible state,” says Chitra. Finally it was only on July 4 that he was carried and produced before the Magistrate and released. “He couldn’t raise his head. Something was wrong with his neck,” says Chitra. The Magistrate even ordered that a statement be taken from him once he recovered about his condition, she explains. From there, lying on Chitra’s lap, unable to talk, half conscious, the distraught family brought him to Colombo National Hospital Accident Ward. “His blood sugar count was a very high 192, for he had been without his diabetic medication for five days and also had been under stress,” says Chitra. Later Sunil was taken to Ward 72, then to Ward 23, the surgical ward and ultimately transferred to Ward 64, the Neurological ICU. “There were no severe fractures, but we heard that his brain was swollen,” she says. On Thursday, July 6 around 9.30 p.m. Sunil was dead. “They say it is a mistake. But the mistake is at the cost of my husband’s life,” says Chitra adding that he was a gentle, jolly and lovable person. No excuses and explanations will bring Sunil to life again.
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