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.
