Mannar mass-grave excavations halted Will resume on 1 October

The excavation at the mass grave in Mannar was temporarily halted for a week yesterday (24) due to urgent official duties. Consultant Judicial Medical Officer of Mannar, in charge of the dig, Dr. W.R.S. Rajapaksa told Ceylon Today that the excavations were halted due to his unavailability during that time as he is scheduled to attend several urgent High Court proceedings. According to him, the team had been engaged in the continuous excavation duties for the last 76 days.

Dr. Rajapaksa noted that the decision was approved by the Mannar Magistrate, who was consulted before temporarily closing off the dig site for a week. Therefore, all excavation activities will recsume on 1 October. At this point, Dr. Rajapaksa noted that 141 complete human skeletons have been unearthed and from which 135 have been removed from the site and are kept at the Mannar Magistrate’s Court, under the authority of the chief investigating officer. Approximately 14 of the human remains have been recognized to be that of children. Furthermore, he noted that the request made to the Ministry of Justice to ship a sample of skeletal remains to Beta Analytics Incorporated in Florida, United States, for radio carbon dating is still pending. Dr. Rajapaksa further noted that in order to forego the issues of chain of custody that occurred during the last mass grave discovery in Matale in 2013 which gained some controversy, it has been decided that the leader of the investigation would personally visit the Florida lab to hand over the selected samples for examination. Several skeletal remains were discovered earlier this year at the proposed Sathosa construction site in the Emil Nagar area in Mannar, subsequently leading to investigations being launched into the discovery. The excavation process was launched under the orders of Mannar Magistrate A.G. Alex Raja, following the submissions made by the Mannar Police. The investigations led by the officers of the Archaeological Department and the Government Analyst’s Department, and the Judicial Medical Officers and Mannar Police officers, have been conducted since May at the location, under the orders of new Mannar Magistrate T.G. Prabhakaran. Senior Archaeologist Prof. Raj Somadeva of the Kelaniya University, who is participating in the investigation’s forensic aspect, had previously observed that the site had shown both the methodical placements of bodies as it is in a grave as well as the irregular positioning of skeletal remains.