COLOMBO: One of the two Sri Lankan Leftist leaders, who were allegedly abducted by a paramilitary group on April 7 and released over the last 24 hours, said here on Tuesday that the interrogators were wanting to know if the newly-formed Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) had any links with the LTTE.
Ms Dimuthu Attygalle, a member of the Central Committee of the FSP, who was released in the early hours of Tuesday, told media persons at the party office that she was released after it became clear to her abductors that she had nothing to do with the LTTE. There have been 56 cases of abduction in Sri Lanka in the last six months, some of them having been carried out, allegedly by paramilitary groups, to investigate terrorist activities.
Attygalle said that she was forced into a white van by six persons in the evening of April 6 near her residence at Godagama. She was then blindfolded and gagged.
She was locked in a room and questioned by an officer for over two hours, regarding the international connections of the People’s Struggle Movement (PSM), the unit in which she worked.
The next day, at dawn, Attygalle was interrogated again along her chief, Premakumar Gunaratnam alias Noel Mudalige, who had been abducted. Attygalle was told that she would be released but was warned against identifying the abductors. Gunaratnam, being an Australian citizen, was deported on the grounds that he had overstayed.