Tattoo betrays suspect wanted by police over death of schoolgirl

By Norman Paliahawadane

A tattoo had betrayed the identity of the main suspect who went into hiding following the recent suspicious death of a 16-year-old schoolgirl in Kalutara, police said yesterday.

The suspect had been arrested by police in Hikkaduwa around noon yesterday, police said.

The 29-year-old suspect allegedly accompanied the teenage girl, who was later found dead near the railway track, to a hotel in Kalutara.

Police said some pelple had contacted police headquarters after the photos of the main suspect were released to the media. People provided information that they identified the suspect by his tattoos and he was a seizer of vehicles for a private leasing company. Based on information received by Kalutara HQI Ruwan Wijesinghe that the suspect had been sighted in Galle and Hikkaduwa, a posse of crime division policemen headed by Crime Division OIC Inspector Dhammika Silva conducted a search in Hikkaduwa and took the suspect into custody.

The suspect was expected to be produced before the Kalutara Magistrate’s to obtain detention orders.

The suspect has been identified as Danushka Gayan Sahabandu, 29, a resident of Isuru Uyana in Kalutara.

The Police revealed that several investigation teams had been deployed to arrest the main suspect wanted by police over the discovery of the body of the 16-year-old schoolgirl nar a rail track behind the hotel she had gone to with the suspect and two others.

Police have also arrested the young couple including another schoolgirl (19) and a man, and the driver of the car in which the group including the victim arrived at the hotel.

The suspects were ordered to be remanded in custody until May 15, after being produced before the Kalutara Magistrate’s Court on Sunday (May 07).

The deceased (16) was identified as a resid