Kohuwala Police yesterday said that an unmarried elderly lawyer who lived alone in a house in Kalubowila has been murdered on her bed and her property was stolen.
The deceased has been identified as Chandani Satharasinghe, 64, of De Silva Road, Kalubowila. Police said that he had a brother who is living in Canada.
She has been in contact with him on the phone. It has been revealed during the Police investigation that the two of them were in contact by phone the last time on February 15.
A person residing in the Mirihana area, who is a friend of the Canadian resident brother, had come to the Kohuwala Police Station yesterday afternoon and filed a complaint after the latter’s relative told him to inform the Kohuwala Police regarding the loss of contact with her by phone after February 15.
Accordingly, a Police team from Kohuwala went to the house and found that the gate next to the front gate was locked, and when they entered the garden through the small gate, the front door of the house was closed. However the kitchen door had been half open. A senior Police officer said that when he entered the house after seeing it opened, he found things thrown around.
Later, in the room adjacent to the living room, the police had found the decomposed body of the lawyer covered with cloth.
It has been further revealed during the Police investigations, that an assailant or a group of assailants who entered the house had disconnected the electricity and killed her on the bed, covered her body with cloths and searched the belongings in the house. Mount Lavinia Acting Magistrate Ratna Gamage, who came to the scene of the crime, conducted the preliminary magisterial investigation and ordered the Police to place the body in the morgue of the Kalubowila Teaching Hospital and conduct the postmortem.
Kohuwala Police are conducting further investigations under the directive of Mount Lavinia SSP Prasanna Brahakmanage.
Bimal Jayasinghe and Shehan Jayawardena