White van armed men abduct 3 Tamil civilians in Colombo

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 09 January 2008, 14:27 GMT]
Armed men in military uniform arriving in a white van forcibly abducted Monday a father of three children at Mukaththuvaaram in Colombo, and in a separate incident a 30-year-old mother and her 5-year-old daughter are alleged abducted Tuesday from their house in Wathala, according to complaints made to Deputy Minister, P. Rathakrishnan and Wattala police by the relatives of the abducted persons.

The father abducted at gun point is T. Sureshkumar, 38, the father of three children and a resident of K. Cyril. C. Perera Mawatte in Kotahena.

Sureshkumar’s wife T. Jameela complained of her husband’s abduction to P. Rathakrishnan, deputy minister and the Upcountry Peoples Front (UPF) parliamentarian.

Kasiviswanathan Puvaneswary, 30 and her daughter Karina, 5, are missing from their home in Kalyani Mawathe in Wathala and are feared abducted by white van armed men, according to complaint made by Puvaneswary’s husband John Prakash Fernando to Wathala police.

Puvanesvary has been living in Wathala for the last ten years.

Deputy Minister Rathakrishnan requested Senior Assistant Police Commissioner, K. N. Illangakoon, to look into these two cases o and urged Wattala police authorities to attend immediately to trace the whereabouts of the missing mother and daughter.

Rathakrishan advised people to carry their National Identity Cards and other required documents when going out of their homes to avoid unnecessary harassment and to report any problematic incident either to his office or the Monitoring Council in Bandaranayake International Hall.

Many have been abducted at gun point in the past and some of them have been freed after paying the abductors huge sums of money, while the fate of others still remain unknown, civil society sources in Colombo said.