Schoolgirl Rape & Four Murders: The 1996 Rape & Murder Of Krishanthi Kumaraswamy In Jaffna

Author Bhagavadas Sriskanthathas and the book cover

By Angie Singam –JUNE 14, 2022

The schoolgirl

Krishanthi Kumaraswamy cycles along a dusty road in the sweltering afternoon heat of Jaffna. ‘Ubiquitous palms, unique to the dry zone, stand direct like sentinels. An eerie feeling permeates the scenery and vegetation in this no-man’s land’. She was on her way to her Chemistry Advanced Level exam. She would be home for lunch. Home was her haven, the place that cushioned her from the war that she had known almost all her life – the place she shared with her widowed mother and younger brother.

Krishanthi was a high achiever. She had aced her O’Levels with seven distinctions and she knew that she was going to blitz the A’Levels as well. She had to. She wanted to study Medicine at University, a very competitive and demanding course. One that only a handful of elite Jaffna students could get into.

Krishanthi never arrived home! Her A’Level results were posted posthumously. She had passed with the highest possible grades, but she wasn’t there to celebrate the news! The 18 year old had been raped and killed by army personnel who had stopped her at a checkpoint on her way home, ostensibly to question her.

The book

Krishanthi remains the face of the horrors of the thirty year civil war in Sri Lanka and the tragic victim of the militarisation of the North. The rape and murder of the schoolgirl by the army and the murder of her mother, brother and neighbour who went looking for her in September 1996, has been graphically captured in a book written by Bhagavadas Sriskanthadas ‘Schoolgirl Rape & Four Murders’. It follows the crime through the court case and the proceedings some of which are produced ad verbatim in the book and provide first- hand accounts of what transpired.

The book was launched at Gleebooks in Sydney on 5 June 2022. Speaking at the launch, Sriskanthadas a former human rights lawyer, journalist and solicitor at the Aboriginal Legal Service in Australia, described the atrocities of war and rape in particular, as a weapon of war. He listed Rwanda, the Congo, Yugoslavia and more recently, Ukraine as countries where rape was systemic during conflict. In his foreword he also describes the many human rights violations committed during the war in Sri Lanka and the absence of any Governmental measures to curb the military or hold them accountable for the atrocities they committed.

Sriskanthadas writes with the clinical accuracy of someone who had poured over the court proceedings and researched conditions in Jaffna during the war, but writes with the heart of someone who understands and appreciates the Tamil culture and ethos. He travelled to Kaithady, Jaffna, where he interviewed neighbours, relatives and friends of the Kumaraswamy family while compiling the book.

Life in the North

Peppered through the book are cameos of life in the North which are familiar to someone who has grown up there – bicycles (a common mode of transport in Jaffna) and the history behind them, the meaning of the Thali Kodi for a Hindu wife, Saraswathi, the Goddess of Learning and Krishanthi’s affinity to her… Sriskanthadas’ powers of observation are heightened by his knowledge of Tamil culture and history.

While the burden of war was punishing, the people continued with their daily rituals and routines – their attempts to maintain normalcy in an otherwise abnormal environment. A review of the book by Philip Radmall, Macquarie University, says that ‘it speaks from the precariousness of ordinary life; how randomly the horror of the killings takes place out of the domestic context and routine goals of a day’. Sriskanthadas captures those routine moments with great detail and warmth.

Against this backdrop, Krishanthi’s personality and family life come alive.

What is distinct in the book is that the Kumaraswamy family were well respected people in the area – cosmopolitan, educated and influential. Krishanthi’s mother grew up in Malaya and did a Bachelor of Arts in India, returning to serve as Principal at a public school in Jaffna. Both younger children were in the best fee paying schools in Jaffna (the oldest daughter was in Colombo). Arguably, they had some power and influence and their family members were able to get the then President of the country, Chandrika Kumaratunga to intervene and justice was served in a fairly quick trial without jury.

The State Counsel for the prosecution in the Kumaraswamy case said in an interview, “In March or April of 1997 the case started and in 1998 it was over. Krishanthi Kumaraswamy was the first successful prosecution against military personnel for rape in the context of the conflict in Sri Lanka”. A pyrrhic victory for the Kumaraswamy family, who lost three members of their family in a senseless act of violence.

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