Today marks 29 years since the Chemmani massacre of 1996, in which Sri Lankan soldiers raped and murdered Tamil schoolgirl, Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, and three of her family members that had gone looking for her.
Krishanthi Kumaraswamy was an A Level student at Chundikili High School who was kidnapped, gang raped and viciously murdered by Sri Lankan soldiers and police officers on September 7th 1996. Three of her family members who went in search of her were also brutally murdered.
Krishanthi was forced to stop at Kaithady Army checkpoint in Jaffna for ‘questioning’, when eleven officers kidnapped and gang raped her before killing her and burying her dismembered body in a ditch. Krishanthi’s 16 year old brother, Pranavan, her mother, Rasamma and a family friend, Kirupakaramoorthy who went in search of Krishanthi were also strangled with a rope and buried in a ditch behind the checkpoint.
In 1998, six of the officers involved were sentenced to death and three others sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment.
Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse, who was found guilty of abducting, raping and killing Krishanthi, her mother, young brother and neighbor, revealed that there were at least 300 to 400 other bodies buried in Chemmani.
“Almost every evening, dead bodies were brought there [to the Ariyalai SLA camp] and the soldiers were asked to bury them,” Rajapakse told courts – he denied taking part in the killings and claimed he only helped bury the victims.
This is the only case that has seen its perpetrators prosecuted in Sri Lanka while countless instances of widespread sexual violence by Sri Lankan forces against Tamils have gone unpunished.
Mass graves
Excavations at Chemmani earlier this year.
Following Rajapakse's confession, the Sri Lankan authorities initiated an investigation in 1998–99. The Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission requested UN assistance, and the Colombo High Court authorised efforts to locate the graves.
A total of 15 bodies were exhumed from multiple sites in Chemmani during the excavations. Some of the skeletons were found blindfolded and bound, grim evidence that these were executions or murders.
By December 1999, the Sri Lankan government asserted that experts reached “a unanimous decision that there are no such graves as originally alleged” beyond those already found and closed the investigation.
In February 2025, Chemmani returned to the spotlight following the discovery of another mass grave in Chemmani. Skeletal remains were found during construction work near a Hindu cemetery in Chemmani. As of this week, a total of 240 skeletons have been identified while 239 have been fully exhumed.
Read more here: Explainer - What are the Chemmani mass graves?