We raped her for about 3 hours

"We raped her for about 3 hours ....

later came to funeral house also and helped

Didn't think that this would go so far"

-- Confession of murderers

According to the verbal testimony given to the police by the suspects of murderers of student Vithya who was gang-raped and killed in Jaffna it has now been

confirmed has been carried out on a contract of revenge. The necessity for revenge in fact was from one of the brothers of one family, of those connected to the murder. The legal case is still being heard against the person whom Vithya's mother has given evidence as having seen the robbery he had committed and on her evidence this person concerned was to be sentenced to prison shortly and he had threatened Vithya's mother after being bailed out and freed some days back from the court hearing and had released his anger in this manner after thus returning home. The verbal statements given by them is as follows:

"We told that woman to stop giving evidence. But she didn't do that. The case which is being heard is taking an unfavourable turn against us. All because of that woman. So what we wanted was to take revenge on her. When thinking of a way to take the revenge a friend of ours told to take Vithya and rape her. After that we passed on this contract to some other friends. They are doing jobs in Colombo. They asked Rs. ten thousand for the job. We gave the money.

On 13th morning we had a good booze. The clique of boys were ready for the job in the morning and were waiting till Vithya was going to school as on other days. She goes to school by about seven thirty on the bicycle. That day the friends were not met on the road. That was unlucky for us. At a lonely place where nobody was around we obstructed the road and took Vithya to an abandoned house in the forest. We were after drinks. At that time it was only anger which was there in our hearts. When Vithya started to shout, we got frightened. She began to struggle. Started fighting, biting and using force. Because of that we took the strip of ribbon with which her long two strands of hair was tied and tied the two hands. We took the other band of ribbon and tied to a tree. Took the belt of her white uniform and tied to a closeby tree which was near a leg of hers. Because she was shouting we poked rags of cloth in her mouth. It was the pair of shorts she was wearing underneath her frock that we poked into her mouth.

After that one by one raped her in turn. From time to time she lost her senses. We were there from 7.45 in the morning until about 11 in the afternoon for over 3 hours. Because it was a lonely area in the jungle nobody came there. She may have lost her senses because rags were poked into her mouth. By about 11 our crowd felt it was enough. When checking before we left, we noticed that she had died after choking from the rags pushed into her mouth. We thought that her dead body would be found. But we didn't think that it would go this far. Thinking that a suspicion would emerge, our whole crowd who came from Colombo stayed back in the village and even helped in the work at home. Even got together with the others and did some acting .... scolding the murderers also.

Nine of those connected to this incident are already in remand jail. All of those who are involved in this gang-rape are those who as a habit are involved in drinking kasippu and engaged in labour-work. The Tamil national with Swiss citizenship is someone who is employed as an assistant cook in a Swiss hotel.

Police are conducting investigations as to whether they had being involved in previous crimes such as this. Protests that had been launched all over Jaffna on behalf of this hideous crime resulting in this unbearable tragedy which brought tremendous shock to Vithya's mother and other members of the family has now been brought under control on court-orders.