Thajudeen Case: A Ghost from the Past, A Name from the Shadows

Colombo is once again whispering about the death that refuses to stay buried. Thirteen years after national rugby star Wasim Thajudeen was found charred in his car near Shalika Grounds, the story has taken a chilling new twist.

At first, back in 2012, it was sold to the public as a tragic accident. A car crash, bad luck, nothing more. The Narahenpita Police closed the file, Borella detectives nodded along, and Sri Lanka moved on. Or so it seemed.

But the cracks appeared quickly. By 2015, then DIG Gamini Mathurata raised doubts, forcing the case into the hands of the CID. The second post-mortem was the bombshell: bones missing, neck injuries, and unmistakable signs of murder. What Colombo’s cocktail parties had been whispering suddenly had the ring of truth — Thajudeen hadn’t crashed, he’d been killed.

The CID retraced his last night: CCTV showed him buying a bottle of water at a Havelock Town supermarket, his car shadowed by another. Then, the mysterious figure near the second vehicle — hands on hips, face hidden, identity unknown. For years that grainy still haunted the case files.

Fast forward to 2025. The underworld is collapsing in on itself. Arrests in Indonesia netted some of the most notorious names: Kehelbaddara Padme, Commando Salinda, Panadura Nilanga, Backhoe Saman, Thambili Lahiru. And from that web of crime, a ghostly connection surfaced.

CID investigators took the widow of Aruna Shantha, better known as Middeniye Kajja, through the old CCTV images. Kajja himself had been assassinated earlier this year, silenced in a hail of bullets. But his widow saw what detectives had missed: the way the man in the footage stood, hands fixed on hips to ease a chronic pain. Her voice broke the silence — “That is my husband.”

Suddenly, the phantom figure near the second car was no longer anonymous. It was Kajja, a gangster who, in a 2023 YouTube interview, had even hinted at knowing secrets about Thajudeen’s death. Now dead, he may have taken those secrets to the grave — or left behind enough for the CID to finally unravel the cover-up.

This identification, investigators say, could be the long-awaited breakthrough in a case tainted by suspicion, power, and delay. For the Thajudeen family, it means that the shadows are at last giving up names. For Colombo’s elite, it means the whispers are about to get louder.

As one retired cop muttered after hearing the news: “Every ghost leaves a footprint. Looks like Kajja’s has finally shown up.”