15-year struggle in search of her son: Jayakumari seeks help from President AKD

Thursday, 27 March 2025 04:34 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Balendran Jayakumari, a widow from Kilinochchi who has been searching for her son Balendran Mahinthan since 2008, handed over a letter to President Anura Kumara Disanayake yesterday requesting help to find her son, who she believes is still alive.

The letter was handed over to the President’s Senior Assistant Secretary of the Public Relations Unit at the Presidential Secretariat Bhathiya Wijayantha.

“One person told me that he had seen my son, along with three other people, being taken away by the Army,” she wrote in her letter.

For over a decade, she has sought justice, filing complaints with various authorities and institutions. Her struggle even led to her arrest under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in 2014.

For the past 15 years, she has been searching for him tirelessly through every available avenue, yet she has not been able to obtain any information about his whereabouts. She has filed complaints with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Kilinochchi Police, Human Rights Commission regional office in Jaffna, Human Rights Commission Head Office in Colombo, and the Presidential Commission to investigate complaints regarding missing persons.

Jayakumari claimed her son was forcibly disappeared in 2008 but she has identified him in a photograph released by a State-run rehabilitation centre in Ambepussa.

Citing a picture of an article written on youth who were under rehabilitation in the Ambepussa rehabilitation camp run by the Justice Ministry in 2009 published in the Irish Times Newspaper on 25 June 2009, and also another picture in a book published by the Centre for Policy Alternatives in 2012, Jayakumari has stated that she has identified her son in those pictures among other youth under rehabilitation.

“Since the disappearance of my son, you are the fifth President to hold the presidency in Sri Lanka. Now, with Your Excellency as President, a leader who understands the struggles of the common people, we believe you will heed our cries and tears and we have renewed hope that you will hear our pleas,” she said in her letter requesting a meeting with President Disanayake to personally discuss about finding her son.

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