Tragic end dashes their hopes

Sarath Siriwardena Kalutara District Roving corr.

The entire Induruwa area was grief stricken as the body of Flt. Sergeant Nalin Nishantha Jayasinghe, who died in Friday's LTTE suicide bomb explosion near the entrance to the SLAF headquarters in Slave Island was brought to his house on Saturday.

The eerie silence pervading the area was broken by the constant screams of his bereaved wife Taranga Nilmini Ranaweera who could not bear up the sight of her husband who left home on the very Friday morning returning home in a coffin.

Nilmini said she and her husband together visited a funeral house on Thursday, January 1 and returned home late in the night. On Friday morning he left for work at SLAF headquarters promising to come on leave during the weekend as they had to admit their three-year-old daughter to a pre-school at Beruwala run by the Beruwala Pradeshiya Sabha.

Nalin would have never for a moment thought that he would return home in this manner. She said the most agonizing thing was that Nalin could not live to seat he completion of their dream home coming up near their ancestral home in Induruwa.

Thirty four-year-old Nalin Nishantha Jayasinghe was the second in a family of three at Kapugoda Maha Induruwa. After completing his education at Bentara Gamini MMV he had joined the SLAF for a career in the Security Forces and served at Anuradhapura, Hingurakgoda, Vavuniya, Trincomalee and several other areas attached to the SLAF Engineering section before being posted to the headquarters.

Nalin's sister-in-law Takshila Lakmini Ranaweera said she was employed in Colombo. Nalin used to contact her on the mobile phone whenever there was any incident in Colombo. As he did not call her on the phone following friday's explosion, she tried his mobile number.

There were rings but he did not answer and she suspected that something was amiss.