Hope against hope?

By Gayan Kumara Weerasingha

The two storied house at No. 30, Moor Road, Wellawatte, belonged a SriLankan airlines pilot. A part of the house consisting of three rooms, kitchen and sitting room had been rented out to an elderly man and his middle-aged daughter from Jaffna for three years at Rs.15,000 per month.
Seventy-nine-year-old Thureiappa Rajendran, a retired government servant, was bedridden and his 40-year-old daughter, Thureiappa Yogarajani was staying with him. The two lived on the old man’s pension and money sent by relatives living in England.
Yogarajani separated from her husband about ten years ago and thereafter she found relief in an extremist religious group.
She had become an active member of this group when she lived in Jaffna and began attending prayer meetings at the Mount Lavinia centre after she came to Colombo.
On 2nd January, the owner of the house was resting at home after a long journey and he was disturbed by a foul smell. He searched the whole house looking for the cause. Next he turned to the garden and started cleaning it up. Despite all his efforts, he could not find the source of the foul smell. It kept getting worse during the next two days and when he couldn’t bear the stench anymore he guessed that the smell must be emanating from a dead rat in the rented part of the house. Then he requested the woman of the rented area to search for the cause of the smell.
“What bad smell? I don’t get any,” she replied.

Complaint

The pilot put up with the smell for several more days and when he couldn’t bear it anymore he went to the Wellawatte police station to lodge a complaint. He asked the police to search the rented part of his house. Accordingly, a police team led by SI Nalin Shriyantha, OIC Wellawatte crimes branch made a search of the house on the instructions of Wellawatte police OIC CI Samarakoon Banda. When the police officers reached the house, the woman was at the house and an unbearable smell was coming from inside the house.
“We want to search the house,” SI Nalin Shriyantha told her.
“Who is inside house?” the police officer questioned.
“It’s only me and my father,” she replied.
“No one else?”
“No,” said Yogarajani.
“We must search,” said the police officers and entered the house.
The police officers first searched the sitting room and then the two front rooms but found nothing. Finally, SI Nalin Shriyantha went to the last room from where the unbearable stench was coming. The police officer who entered the room was shocked by a most unpleasant scene. On a bed in the room was a decomposing body which was secreting juices.

God can heal him

“Who is this?” the police officer questioned the woman, closing his nose and mouth with his hands.
“My father,” she replied.
“What are you doing, keeping a body inside the house?” SI Nalin questioned her.
“It’s my father. He is not dead. He is not well. He was breathing even yesterday. Only God can heal him. I pray to him until he gives strength to my father. God will give strength to my father in a few days,” she said.
The police officers understood that there was no point in talking with her any further and took her to the police station. They then made arrangements to obtain a magistrate’s order to conduct an autopsy on the body. At the inquiry, Colombo Assistant Judicial Medical Officer P. Senevirathna concluded that the person must have died about 10 days ago.
The police officers found that the woman had reached a state of psychosis as a result of following the views and prayers of the extremist group. From the day her father died she had been sleeping on a bed in the same room where the body was kept, praying to God all night.
The police is now following the extremist religious group.