Police detectives investigating the death of an Indian chef employed at a restaurant in Wellawatte, Colombo are awaiting the postmortem report to confirm whether the deceased had committed suicide or was murdered.
The body of Thangarasa Selvarasu, aged 23, who worked in the kitchen of the Big Banana Restaurant in Wellawatte, was found washed up on the beach in Mundalama, Puttalam, some 68 miles north of Colombo.
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| File pic of the scene at Mundalama, Puttalam when the Indian chef’s body was recovered from the sea |
Two persons – the wife of the owner of the Banana Restaurant and a senior police officer attached to the Criminal Investigation Department – are in police custody as the main suspects in the case.
They have been identified as Sivakumaran Shiwani, wife of Big Banana Restaurant owner Mariyanayagam Leslie Rajkumar, and Chandana Pushpalal Silva, chief inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
According to Chief Inspector W. M Samarakoon, officer in charge at the Wellawatte Police Station, the greater part of the investigation has been completed. “The postmortem report will confirm whether the victim was strangled or had committed suicide,” Inspector Samarakoon told the Sunday Times. “In the meantime, the Government Analysts’ Department is conducting its forensic investigation.”
According to Wellawatte OIC W. M Samarakoon, Thangarasa Selvarasu, a resident of Chennai, South India, was brought down on June 11 by the restaurant owner, at the owner’s expense, to work as a cook.
Staff at the restaurant told the police that Thangarasa Selvarasu had been talking of returning to India.
A few days before the arrest of the two suspects, the restaurant owner’s wife Sivakumaran Shiwani had lodged a complaint with the Wellawatte Police, saying Thangarasa Selvarasu had “disappeared.”
Thangarasa Selavarasu was later apprehended by the police while travelling on a bus heading to Mannar. The arrest was made by CID Chief Inspector Chandana Pushpalal Silva. Chief Inspector Silva later told the Wellawatte and Mundalama police that the victim was found hanging from a rope in a room in the restaurant.
On June 27, fishermen in Mundalama called the police to say they had seen two persons dumping a gunny bag into the sea. The Mundalama Police rushed to the scene and took the two persons in for questioning. They were identified as Lesley Rajakumar, owner of Wellawatte’s Big Banana restaurant, and CID Chief Inspector Pushpalal Silva.
Both the CID officer and the restaurant owner told the police that they decided to dump the body in the sea as they “did not know what to do with it.” |
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