SLA arrests 16 Tamils in Vaazhaichcheanai

[TamilNet, Friday, 31 October 2008, 12:56 GMT]
Sixteen Tamil civilians including three women were taken into custody during a cordon and search operation conducted jointly by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) and police in Ka'n'nankiramam, Vinaayakapuram and Pa'ndimadu villages within Vaazhaichcheanai police division Thursday early morning.

During the pre-dawn search operation all items in the houses in the area were subjected to intense scrutiny and the particulars of the residents recorded.

Of the sixteen civilians taken into custody, 14 were released after interrogation while a man and a woman are being detained at Kalkudaa police station for further investigations, area residents said.

The arrested include civilians displaced from Trincomalle during the recent hostilities, those possessing Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards of cell phone cards not registered in their own names, people from different villages within Batticaloa district moving into new areas but not registered in the nearby police.

Meanwhile, the residents say that this search operation was conducted on the instructions of the Officer in Charge (OIC) who recently took charge of the police station from the recently transferred OIC.