Grandfather describes grenade attack

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 23 December 1998, 00:22 GMT]
"I heard the blast of a grenade in my shop around 8.15 p.m. on Sunday night December 20. I called for my grandson but there was no answer. I saw him lying in a pool of blood in the shop when I went in to check with the lamp I got from our neighbour Haabis Naana"

"An SLA soldier called Ajantha came to the spot when we were trying to take the injured boy to the hospital and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and said something"

"I was not in a mind to understand what he said. But I told him 'you all have done what you wanted to do. I have to take my grandson to hospital. Shoot all of us if you want to do so.'"

"I know very well the soldier Ajantha and the other soldiers who came with him. They are from the Paper factory SLA camp. I believe that they are the people who lobbed the grenade into my shop" said Mirissa Paranagamage Wimaladasa in his evidence at the inquest held Monday by Koaralaipattu coroner Mr.S Karalasingham into the death of Aarumugam Rajkumar, 17 the grandson of Wimaladasa, the owner of a tea kiosk at Paper town, on the outskirts of Valaichenai.

Rajkumar was wounded when a grenade was lobbed into Wimaladasa's tea kiosk on Sunday night.

The youth died while being rushed from the Valaichenai hospital to the Batticaloa hospital for emergency surgery.

Wimaladasa said in his evidence that a soldier had come to the kiosk around 4.15 in the afternoon when he was away and had demanded arrack from his wife who told that the did not stock the liquor any longer.

The soldier had got angry and had dashed the empty bottle he had brought with him to collect the arrack on the road.

The soldier had gone again to the kiosk demanding arrack in the absence of Wimaladasa. The grenade was lobbed later in the evening killing Rajkumar who was in the shop at the time.