Woman identifies SLA soldier in attempted rape case

[TamilNet, Monday, 14 March 2005, 11:51 GMT]
A sixty three year old Tamil woman of Neerveli in Jaffna Monday identified the soldier of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) who attempted to rape her last Thursday at an identification parade held in the Jaffna Magistrate's Court.

Jaffna acting Magistrate Mr.Kanagaretnam Kesavan held the identification parade on the instruction of Additional Magistrate Ms Srinithi Nanthasekaran.

Eight soldiers were produced in the identification parade and the complainant woman identified the suspect soldier who is deployed in the SLA camp at Kankesanthurai, legal sources said.

The acting Magistrate ordered the suspect be remanded and to produce him before the permanent magistrate.

According to the complainant woman, when she was alone in her house the suspect soldier had entered and attempted to rape her after gagging her and removing her sari. However the complainant woman raised cries and neighbours had rushed to her rescue.

The suspect fled from the scene on seeing the crowd.

She is living with her husband but her husband had gone out on the day of incident, relatives said.

Her children are residing abroad, according to them.