2ND LEAD

Two youths shot dead in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Sunday, 31 August 2008, 15:32 GMT]
Unknown armed men shot and killed two youths Sunday afternoon east of Jaffna District Secretariat in Chu'ndikkuzhi, Police said. The victims were identified from the identity cards in their possession as 26-year-old Nithyananthan Thushyanthan, from 120 Brown Road, Jaffna and 29-year-old Kanagaratnam Narmathan, from Kantharmadam 119/2. One of the victims is a student of a Malaysian University, who seems to have come to Jaffna recently.

Police recovered the dead bodies and handed them over to the mortuary of the Jaffna Hospital for identification after Acting Magistrate of Jaffna, Sinnaththuai Kesavan, inspected the crime site.

Monday morning, the family members of the victims on learning the killings in the media went to the mortuary and identified the bodies at the inquest into the deaths held by Jaffna magistrate Vasanthasenan.

The victims were friends and one of them had come on vacation from Malaysia recently, they told the magistrate in their statements.

The two had left home on motorcycle Sunday around 2:00 p.m on personal errand and had failed to return home.

The magistrate directed the bodies to be given to the relatives after post mortem examination.

The killings took place in a by-lane, 200 meters from Jaffna Kandy Road.