Police arrest eight Tamil youths in Point Pedro

[TamilNet, Saturday, 01 February 2003, 20:09 GMT]
The Point Pedro Police Saturday arrested eight Tamil youths in the Kudathanai village in Vadamarachchi division following a dispute between the soldiers of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA)and the members of the vigilant committee of the area. The arrest followed an incident Saturday morning when the vigilant committee detained two SLA soldiers who had forcibly entered a house and harassed the family living there, sources said.

Saturday morning more soldiers had come to the scene and forcibly removed the two soldiers from the custody of vigilant committee members.

Following this Kudathanai police took eight Tamil youths from the area into custody, soldiers of the SLA held a house-to-house search in the village and ordered all civilians to gather at the public library building for investigation.

Later the people of the village were warned by the SLA soldiers that they would open fire if they failed to maintain good relationship with the SLA in the future, sources said.

On Saturday evening several hundred residents of the area demonstrated in front of the police station demanding the release of the eight Tamil youths. However they left the area when the police ordered them to disperse, sources said.

The arrested youths now in the custody of the Police are identified as Sellathurai Senthooran (23), Thevarajah Jeyarajah (24), Thievendram Kalaivanan (24), Balasegaram Kaartheepan (20), Kanakaretnam Rajakumar (24), and Iyathurai Balakaran (25), Kandasamy Kirushnaraj (20) and Thevarajah Subashkaran (20), civilian sources said.