A complaint has been lodged with the police requesting the excavation of a burial site where over 180 unarmed Tamil individuals, including infants, have been buried after being killed by state defence forces.
The complainant is a person who lost ten family members in the massacre.
The 35th anniversary of the Sathurukondan massacre, regarding which strong evidence has been recorded before a presidential commission implicating state defence forces, was commemorated by the Tamil community in eastern Sri Lanka with offerings of flowers and the lighting of lamps.
In his complaint to the Kokkuvil Police Station in Batticaloa, Vairamuttu Kulandavadivel describes how he hid and witnessed the army surrounding his village and abducting ten members of his family, including his mother, father, younger sister, younger brother, grandfather, grandmother, and three children of his sisters, three and a half decades ago.
He requests that his relatives’ bodies be recovered, as there are eyewitnesses to the place where they were buried after being killed.
“There are survivors who witnessed that they were hacked, shot and buried at the Boys’ Town camp in Sathurukondan. Therefore, there is a need to recover our relatives’ bodies.”
Through his complaint, he requests the police to conduct excavations at the Boys’ Town camp in Sathurukondan, where villagers including his relatives are said to have been buried.
“I am filing a complaint seeking that excavations be conducted at the Boys’ Town military camp in Sathurukondan, where our relatives have been buried.”
Sathurukondan had not been included in the list of mass graves recently revealed by Justice Minister Harshana Nanayakkara as sites under investigation.
The 35th anniversary commemoration, held on the evening of 9 September 2025 near the monument built at the Panichchaiyadi junction in Sathurukondan, was organized by the relatives of the 184 victims from four villages who were murdered on 9 September 1990.
According to evidence presented before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Involuntary Removal or Disappearances of Persons in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, chaired by retired High Court Justice Krishnapillai Palakidner and appointed by former President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga on 4 January 1995, officials of the Sathurukondan Boys’ Town camp were implicated in the massacre.
The only person who survived the massacre carried out by the army was Kandasamy Krishnakumar from Pilleiyaradi, who was 27 at the time.
According to him, at around 5.30 pm on 9 September 1990, a group of armed soldiers from the Boys’ Town military camp in Sathurukondan had entered the villages of Sathurukondan, Kokkuvil, Panichchaiyadi and Pilleyaradi, and had ordered villagers to come out of their houses.
In addition, 185 villagers who came out to the streets were surrounded, had their hands tied behind their backs, and were taken to the military camp.
Among them were 38 villagers from Sathurukondan, 47 from Kokkuvil, 37 from Panichchaiyadi and 62 from Pilleyaradi.
Among those arrested by the military were 85 women including pregnant mothers.
The group also included 42 children under the age of ten and 28 people over the age of 60.
Even though the soldiers had told the villagers that they were being taken to the military camp for an ordinary investigation and would be released after questioning, no one returned home for several hours except one.
According to the Palakidner commission’s reports, Krishnakumar, showing his wounds, had said that soldiers stabbed him three times in the chest.
He had also seen around ten other people lying on the ground with stab wounds.
Rape cases involving women
The following is an excerpt from the shocking statement given to the Tamil Net website by Krishnakumar three years later, in which he had revealed the horrific acts against women committed by soldiers.
He had witnessed this while lying on the ground after being wounded.
“They brought girls who were completely naked. Their mouths were filled with soil, and they were raped repeatedly. Then the soldiers brought swords and cut off their breasts. Three of the girls were pushed into a well. While they continued to rape, kill and dispose of bodies in pits, I slowly crawled out in the dark. After the soldiers left, I crawled toward the fence of the camp and hid in the scrub jungle behind it. Later, the soldiers brought tires and set the bodies in the pits on fire. The fire burned until around 3 am. After it was extinguished, the pit was filled with soil.”
Family members of the massacre victims allege that justice has not yet been served despite the fact that it has been revealed before a presidential commission that army personnel and village guards committed that crime.