A woman appealed to the Mannar Citizen's Committee and the ICRC in Mannar Tuesday that the condition of her husband, Ponnappapillai Sivanesan, 31, who is detained at the Special Task Force (STF) camp at Ilanthamoddai is serious because he was severely assaulted and tortured during his arrest and in custody. The woman, Rajani Sivanesan, pleaded with the Citizens' Committee and the ICRC to do the needful to provide her husband urgent medical attention to save his life.

Sivanesan's relatives said that he was severely assaulted and arrested for refusing to let four drunken STF commandos take his video player away. His wife and three children were also indiscriminately assaulted by them, they said.

Sivanesan's wife said that she pleaded with the STF to provide her husband medical treatment, as he was struggling for his life. But commandos had ordered to go away and had threatened her that she should not complain to anybody about her husband's condition.

The commandos, including the Officer in Charge of the Ilanthamoddai camp, had gone to Sivanesan's house in Sooriyakaddaikaadu, 19 miles southeast of Mannar, Monday night around 8.30 p.m. and demanded his video player free of charge.

Sources said that the commandos were in the habit of harassing Sivanesan for his video player. Sivanesan ekes out a living by renting his video player in the village. The STF camp at Ilanthamoddai is about two kilometres from Sooriyakaddaikaadu on the road from Uyilankulam to Naanaattaan in Mannar.

Meanwhile, the Citizens' Committee has been informed that Sundaramoorthy, 42, of Koorai, in Illuppakadavai, who went to the jungle to collect honey on 16 June has gone missing. He is the father of four children.