Lankan charged in Australia for in-laws’ murder

The Australian Supreme Court was told yesterday how a Sri Lankan man stabbed his wife’s mother and father who were visiting them from Sri Lanka.

Badrakanthi Geethika Hettiarachchi, 46, said her husband stabbed her father to death while the elderly man was sitting and holding her four-month-old daughter.

She told an Australian jury she initially feared baby Rosie had also been injured by her husband, who was clutching two knives during the attack on her parents.

“He pushed Rosie away from dad’s chest and he stabbed my dad,” Hettiarachchi told the Supreme Court yesterday.

“I was very scared and I thought I was next to be stabbed.”

Hettiarachchi said her husband then turned to her mother, stabbing the woman in the face. “He was mad, like jumping and stabbing everywhere,” she said.

Hettiarachchi said after the attacks her husband ran away and she picked up her baby daughter to try to help her injured father.

“I saw Rosie’s clothes full of blood too . . . I thought he stabbed my daughter as well,” she said.

“I took her to the bathroom and I put her on the change table. I checked everywhere . . . she was all right.”

Sarath Hettiarachchi, 47, is charged with murdering Sammy and Iranganie Perera, both 76, at the Hallam home he shared with his wife, son Ryan, 5, and baby daughter, on March 7 last year.

The jury heard Mr and Ms Perera, who were visiting from Sri Lanka, had earlier criticised their son-in-law after he complained about his wife.

Hettiarachchi told the jury her husband came home, got two knives from the kitchen and attacked her parents.

Hettiarachchi gave evidence she and her husband married in Sri Lanka in 1990, having met for the first time about two weeks before the wedding.

Hettiarachchi said she moved to Australia to be with her husband in 1994.

She said her husband became physically violent towards her the following year, when he punched her in the nose after she couldn’t find a job. Hettiarachchi gave evidence she didn’t leave her husband because she was scared. “He said if I left with my son he would kill me . . . and he is happy to go to jail,” she said.

Hettiarachchi said her parents’ visit to Australia was their first and they had met baby Rosie for the first time.

Describing her parents as “very calm and kind”, she said she didn’t see any violence from them. Sarath Hettiarachchi has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder.

The trial continues today before Justice Betty King. Herald Sun