The case of Little Jerusha

By Thulasi Muttulingam

On Sunday 21 June, two months ago, a family in rural Kilinochchi set out unsuspectingly for their daily bath. Life has been a rollercoaster of nightmarish ordeal for them since.

A three-year-old child disappeared, leaving behind trauma and unanswered questions in her wake. Some as-yet unidentified body parts along with the T-shirt she was wearing that day turned up days later. Her family members, especially mother and uncle, have been severely tortured (allegedly) in Police custody. Her 14-year-old cousin has ended up in jail, accused of sexually molesting her (though not as yet of murdering her).

Her village of Ellukadu is in turmoil, with people fearful, agitated and angry over what has happened, and is continuing to happen to them. A village of small time farm and fishing labourers, they are without recourse to the higher echelons of power to address the various violations of their rights.

Background

Celestina Chandrakumar (31) the mother, had a ‘reputation’ in the village; She was a sexually active, single woman. Having never been married, she had three children, whom she looked after on her own, with the help of her family. As can happen in rural villages, she was much judged for this. Yet villagers also agreed that she was a hardworking, wage labourer whose children were always neatly turned out and appeared well looked-after.

On the afternoon of 21 June, around 4 p.m., she and her current partner along with her three children as well as her brother-in-law had set out to the village irrigation channel to have their baths. This is where the villagers habitually bathe and wash their clothes as many still don’t have running piped water in their homes yet.

That afternoon as she set out, Celestina had her arms full with a basin of clothes to be washed. Little Jerusha meanwhile was crying, demanding to be picked up, and carried. She was not in the mood for a long walk.

Just then around a bend, riding on a cycle arrived Jerusha’s two cousins; Celestina’s sisters’ sons aged 12 and 14, Vidushan and Satheeswaran. Celestina’s brother-in-law, who is a village pastor, sought to relieve the child’s crying by giving her a cycle ride. The nephews were on their way to cut grass to feed their livestock. One nephew was riding the cycle while the other was on the pillion.

“I handed the child to the nephew on the pillion (Vidushan) and told them to take her to the channel. I noticed the sickle my other nephew had in his hand for cutting grass, and as a precaution removed it from his hand, because I didn’t want any accidents within the vicinity of the child,” says A. Jerome, the pastor.

Disappearance

The two boys had dutifully dropped Jerusha at the channel. While the 12-year-old Vidushan had then run ahead to splash in the channel waters, the 14-year-old Satheeswaran had immediately turned back on his cycle to retrieve his sickle from his uncle.

“I saw him coming back to us alone and demanded to know where the child was. He said she was safe by the channel and that Vidushan was with her,” recalls the uncle. While Vidushan had run into the water however, Jerusha had stayed behind.

“I saw her standing among the grasses, only as tall as the grass itself – she was so little,” recalls one lady, who was also at the channel at that time. When the mother showed up and asked where the child was, they looked around expecting to find her – but she had mysteriously vanished.

The family started searching for her in the vicinity, not immediately panicking because they thought she must have wandered some distance but couldn’t have gone far. The channel is not close to the villages’ houses, it is surrounded by paddy fields. At first, these fields were scoured.

According to Celestina, she did not fear her daughter had drowned because Jerusha was not adventurous in the water. “She always stayed by a corner of the irrigation channel and insisted on bathing by herself. She never tried to venture further than that into the channel,” Celestina recalls.

Eventually though even the irrigation channel was scoured, when fears for the missing child mounted. “We immediately organised the village in a search when we realised we could not find her. We informed the village’s Grama Niladari and the nearby Army camp (which was much closer than the Police station) and they scoured the village too. By 9 p.m., after looking for her everywhere we could think of, we realised we had to inform the Police. So I went to the Kilinochchi Police station with my brother-in-law to register a complaint. We reached there about 10 p.m.,” says Celestina.

Police torture

The Police station in town is quite a few miles away from this interior village. Celestina’s brother-in-law Jerome transported her there on his motorcycle. “As soon as we went in and told them what had happened, the Police didn’t waste time asking us questions. They immediately bundled us into a jeep and brought us back to the scene of her disappearance.

At first, they took away my brother-in-law Jerome and nephews Satheeswaran and Vidushan for further questioning in the fields. We couldn’t see in the dark what was happening to them but eventually we heard them screaming in pain, begging for mercy.

I ran to them, and begged the Police not to harm them and got pulled on, stamped on and beaten myself,” says Celestina.

“A female Police officer yanked me by the hair and brought me to the ground.  Then a male Police officer squeezed my waist so hard, I urinated. They laughed. I brought up my hands in prayer to please not do this to me. My hands were kicked aside by Police on either side of me who then stood on my palms, pinning them to the ground. Next another officer stomped me on the stomach so hard with his shoe that blood rushed out through my vagina.

The one Tamil female Police on hand, who had yanked me down by my hair sneered, “She must have been pregnant with one more of her illicit children and has just aborted it now.”

Continuing ordeal and Police cover up

Celestina claims that this ordeal continued for days afterwards, for herself, her brother-in-law, her partner and her nephews.

“They tortured us in numerous ways; through electrocution, burning with a hot iron, scraping with knives… Then they would rub in medicine to cure the torture marks and prevent them from showing. Whenever INGO or civil society officers visited to see me, they would dress me up in full sleeved clothes to cover the marks, put on make-up on me and threaten to torture me further if I dared divulge what was really happening to me.”

Thus, when a well-known Tamil TV channel came to interview me, the cameraman told me that he was surprised to see the mother of the missing child so stylishly dressed and made up. I took the risk of telling him what had really happened and peeled back my clothes to show the torture marks but he and his team evinced no interest in filming it or letting the wider world know of my ordeal, as it was happening.

The Police only dressed me thus when someone from outside was about to visit. That first night of torture when I started bleeding vaginally – I bled for days afterward but they sneered at my request for even sanitary napkins. I bled for three days without changing my clothes in a corner of the Police station. As they wouldn’t give me the napkins, I just sat soiling my clothes, in between bouts of torture.”

Brief release

“At the end of three days, they released us in the night and told us to go look for the child. Till then, they had been torturing us separately, saying that they knew we had sold the child for Rs. 300,000, and demanding to know whom we had sold her to.

“Back at the village, I tried to join the villagers who were by them searching for my daughter in the woods adjoining the village. My ordeal had made me disoriented however and I was told to go rest. The next night, I was again picked up by the Police who judged me for having slept while the other villagers were still combing the woods. They brought me back to the Police station and again started beating me.

“Due to constant ramming of my head against the wall, I cracked my skull, and due to the stomping with booted feet on my head, I have lost the hearing of one ear. I was so exhausted by the constant torture that I started telling the police whatever they wanted to hear. When they kept beating, electrocuting and burning me continuously what could I do? They even took me to Jaffna once and threatened to kill and dump me into a river unless I told them where my child was.

“They said they would then pass my death off as a suicide. I didn’t have a valid answer to give them since I had absolutely no idea where my child was, so I started inventing stories on where and whom I had sold her to. It would get me a little respite but then they would come and torture me again when they couldn’t find her through that lead.”

Corroboration

This part of her story at least was corroborated by Police Spokesman ASP Ruwan Gunasekara, whose comment to us was, “we totally deny that she was tortured. We plan to pursue our own case against her for spreading lies. She kept telling different stories to the Police and sending them on wild goose chases all over the country from Kalutara to Jaffna.”

According to Celestina, after three more days of torture, they finally recorded a statement from her that she had sold her child to a woman called Renuka, and then released her. “It was not true. I would never sell my children. I have two older children aged 10 and eight and have never at any point considered giving them up, even though I am a single mother. I have worked as a labourer lifting cement bags to support my children but never abandoned them or considered abandoning them. But the Police made my signing this statement a condition of my release. I was willing by this point to do anything to escape their torture, so I readily signed it.”

A day later, on the morning of 29 June, two farmers applying pesticides to their fields came across a child’s body – decapitated and packed up in a polythene bag, with Jerusha’s T-shirt lying nearby. They immediately alerted the police. Celestina was again called to the Police station to identify her child’s clothing as the body was mangled and unidentifiable.

“They held up the yellow T-shirt she had been wearing that day and asked me if it was hers. I fell to the floor weeping when I saw it. That was the first instance when the Police showed any compassion. They stroked me and asked why I hadn’t told them the truth from the beginning – that I had had nothing to do with my child’s disappearance? I did not know what to say to that.”

Turn in investigations

Celestina seems to have been released from suspicion but the family’s ordeal is far from over. Attention then turned to her two nephews who had transported the child to the channel that day. Both children, who claim to have been beaten and tortured in Police custody, also resorted to telling lies to appease the Police. Eventually, one of them, Vidushan (12) was released while the other, Satheeswaran (14) remains in Police custody.

“They kept beating us demanding we tell the truth – yet when we told the truth, they beat us even harder,” says Vidushan. “So we resorted to telling all kinds of lies – that our uncle Jerome had told us to kidnap her, that we had murdered her ourselves.  But then they demanded we show them the body and we couldn’t.”

Meanwhile Satheeswaran, still in custody and further tortured, was made to admit that he had sexually abused Jerusha. He has also admitted to sexually abusing other girls in the village and engaging in homosexual activities himself. His parents are not inclined to believe this, as they think he was induced under torture to say it. “I don’t think my son even knew what homosexuality was until the Police put that idea into his head,” says his father.

None of the villagers seem inclined to believe this of Satheeswaran as he was a well-liked boy in the village. “He was a very responsible child, always running errands for his parents and taking part in the various village duties industriously. He was also noted for his good manners, being ever courteous and respectful in his interactions,” notes one villager.

On 26 July, on a visit to this village, we noticed a Police jeep making a round of the area, terrorising people. Asked why, some mothers said they had been requested to bring their children to the Police station for questioning. Knowing what had happened to Satheeswaran and Vidushan, they were frightened for their children’s sakes.

As it turned out however, all the children summoned to the Police station were girls – the girls whom Satheeswaran had named as having sexually abused, along with little Jerusha.

Present at this time was Human Rights Lawyer Swasthika Arulingam, a member of a team of lawyers monitoring the case. According to her, the Police were breaching several rules regarding minors, including not informing probation officers, not informing officers of the National Child Protection Authority on time, not obtaining a proper Court order, and not telling the villagers that they had the right to have a lawyer present in the interrogation of their children.

As such she presented herself at the Police station as the children’s lawyer (with the parents’ permission) and demanded to sit in on the inquiry. The inquiry as it turned out, was on whether Satheeswaran had really abused them as he had said. “The children were clearly puzzled by the questions,” says Swasthika. They were asked repeatedly if Satheeswaran had ever lifted up their dresses, ever touched them inappropriately… but they all said no.”

At the end of the interrogation, Swasthika had offered to drop the villagers off in their village but the Police had said they would take care of it. “I was on my way back to Colombo and the parents said they were okay with the Police dropping them off, so I left,” says Swasthika.

Except that the children were not released as promised that day. They were retained in custody and taken to the hospital where apparently a male doctor had taken vaginal swabs from them to see if they had been sexually abused. None of the parents or children had been asked their consent to this. Only one mother had insisted and succeeded in staying by her child as this procedure was done. All the other children had to undergo the ordeal alone. It appears however that the Police still could not gain a concrete case of sexual abuse from this – apart from one. One of the children is autistic. She had said yes, when asked if she had been sexually abused, where all the other children had said no.

It’s hard to determine the cause but according to one activist source on the ground who knows the child, the explanation might be that this autistic child doesn’t really understand sentences; she tends to repeat yes, if one asks questions ending with a yes, and no if one asks the same question ending with a no. In what way her testimony is valid therefore is questionable; in the meantime, the boy has been brought before the magistrate where he has admitted to sexual abuse, and has been further remanded.

“All the talk now is about the boy’s alleged sexual abuse,” says Swasthika. “Given the time constraints, there seems little chance that he could have been the one to murder Jerusha – but for the moment, the conversation has become derailed on what it is that he is or is not culpable of.”

In the meantime, neither the Police not the villagers seem any closer to finding out what really happened to Jerusha within the few minutes she was left alone.

“People are judgemental hereabouts,” says Swasthika. “First they judged the mother for being sexually active, now they judge the boy based on what he has admitted to. The tide of sympathy has turned against him, based on this suspect evidence being broadcast about him. Meanwhile the case continues to baffle us with bizarre twists and turns. We are no closer to finding out what had really happened to Jerusha or gaining closure for her.”