A rugby star’s body exhumed, a ghost returns to haunt Rajapaksa
Wasim Thajudeen
When Wasim Thajudeen’s charred body was discovered inside a burnt car on May 17, 2012, police said it was an accident. Now in the last days of the campaign for the parliamentary elections, the star rugby player’s death, which has been declared a murder, is threatening to singe Mahinda Rajapaksa as investigations cut close to the former first family.
“I had my suspicions that it was a case of unnatural death and when the judge asked me during the court hearing, I told him that the circumstances in which he was found were suspicious,” Wasim’s elder sister Ayesha said.
“But we did not have any suspects in mind. I couldn’t think of anybody who could have done this,” she told The Indian Express. No one in the Thajudeen family thought that the 28-year-old Wasim, popularly known as the “gentle giant” and one of Sri Lanka’s most popular rugby players, could have any enemies.
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Earlier, this week, Wasim’s body was exhumed from a Muslim burial ground in Colombo after the Criminal Investigations Department of the Sri Lankan police, which took over the case in January this year, told the court that it was murder and quoted the post mortem report to say he was abducted and tortured before he was killed with a blow to his neck.
The CID is also investigating a vehicle used in the suspected abduction of Wasim before his death. At the time of the incident, it was in use by an NGO run by Shiranthi Rajapaksa, the wife of the former President.
A senior minister in the Sirisena government told a press conference that the investigation had found the involvement of three personnel of the Presidential Security Guard, which reports directly to the President. At a campaign rally, another minister linked the former President’s two sons, Namal and Yositha, to the case.
Ayesha said she would not comment on the allegations. She said she did not know anything about Yositha and her brother having a falling out. “But I can say that Namal and Yositha went to the same school as Wasim. They were friends. During their school days, those two have even come to our home,” she said.
Rajapaksa, who is campaigning to become Prime Minister eight months after he was defeated as President of Sri Lanka, has hit out at the allegations. Sri Lanka will vote on August 17 to elect 225 members of Parliament. The United People’s Freedom Alliance, of which he is a candidate, is pitted against the United National Front for Good Governance, headed by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The election also pits Rajapaksa against President Maithripala Sirisena, who heads the UPFA. His projection of himself as the prime ministerial candidate is a challenge to Sirisena, who defeated him in the presidential election and to the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe alliance for government formation immediately after.
“This election is all about the unfinished business of January,” said P Saravanamuttu of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. With Rajapaksa and his possible return the only issues in the election, the re-investigation “holds explosive implications”, Saravanamuttu said, “even though we are going to hear more about it only after the elections”.
As the details play out in the local media and in the election campaign, the case recalls the dark side of the Rajapaksa era, which was marked by killings, disappearances and thuggish incidents. “First, they tried to portray us as thieves and when they have no proof of corruption to produce after seven months of investigations, they are now trying to say that we murdered people. This is why bodies are being exhumed in the middle of an election,” Rajapaksa, who faces corruption allegations, told the The Island, a Sri Lankan daily.
“The way they levelled allegations at us before the presidential election would make anyone think they were already in possession of all the evidence of corruption they needed. But, the people could see that after the election, they had no evidence at all and more than seven months later they still have not found any evidence of corruption. This is why they are trying desperate expedients like exhuming bodies,” he said.
A former minister in the Rajapaksa cabinet also told the media that Wasim’s family had opposed the exhumation on religious grounds.
Ayesha, a dental surgeon who helped in the identification of her brother’s body by a small metal pin-like object inserted in his knee after a surgery, said it was painful to the family to see her brother’s death being politicised. “We don’t have any political involvement. But I want everyone to know we fully support the investigation. It is false to say that we came under political pressure for the exhumation of Wasim’s body. We have full faith and confidence in the CID. We want justice done for Wasim’s death in a court of law,” she said.
Ayesha said the family had struggled to get a death certificate for her brother because the “cause of death report” did not come for 18 months as a court heard the police case for identification of the body and their reasons for Wasim’s death. “Although the police wanted us to believe it was an accident, they gave no compatible cause of death,” Ayesha said.
There was also a long wait for the Judicial Medical Officer’s post mortem while the case was being heard. While the family awaited the court’s verdict, the government changed.
For the Thajudeen family, hope now rests in President Sirisena, whose “clean-guy” reputation has only increased over the last eight months. “In January, the new government took the case away from the police and handed it to the CID. Since then, there is an active investigation, and we have full trust in the CID and President Sirisena”.
Even if Rajapaksa is elected, said Ayesha, she has faith the President would continue with the investigation. “The President is not going to change. He will continue. And we believe he will do the right thing,” she said.
