Raj Somadeva's Reports Contradict One Another, Says ITAK
29-Oct-2026.
The contents of the third interim report submitted by Professor Raj Somadeva, an archaeologist, on the Chemmani mass grave are in complete contradiction with those of his two earlier reports. This was precisely why the need for international expert monitoring during the excavation process had been emphasised, said M.A. Sumanthiran, General Secretary of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK).
Sumanthiran also stressed that identifying the individuals to whom the excavated human skeletons belonged was the most important part of the investigation. However, he expressed concern that despite more than 500 human skeletons having been recovered from the Chemmani mass grave so far, no progress had been made in establishing their identities.
The interim summary report submitted by Professor Somadeva to the Jaffna Magistrate's Court last week, on 19 October, reportedly raised the possibility that, given the large number of bodies buried at Chemmani, the deceased might have died from an infectious disease or a natural disaster. The report also suggested that the priority at the time might have been to bury the bodies quickly rather than to bury them along with their personal belongings.
Clarifying his position on these observations, Sumanthiran said that several aspects of the interim report recently submitted to court could not be accepted.
In particular, he said, the report contradicted the contents of the two interim reports previously submitted by the professor. Those earlier reports had referred to evidence of a criminal act at Chemmani and identified the site as a mass grave. However, the latest report omitted those aspects and introduced hypotheses involving an infectious disease or a natural disaster.
Sumanthiran said these amounted to substantive inconsistencies between the professor's reports.
He explained that this was why ITAK had previously insisted that international experts should monitor the excavation work while it was in progress. Although the excavations could be carried out by Sri Lankan Government institutions, he said, the entire process should be subject to international oversight, including scrutiny of whether the excavations were being conducted properly and whether the recovered human remains were being preserved correctly.
He further stated that, in investigations involving mass graves, the most important task after recovering a skeleton was to establish the identity of the individual to whom it belonged.
Merely recording the number of skeletons recovered each day served little purpose if no effort was made to identify the deceased, he argued. Measures to establish the identity of the individual should have begun as soon as the first skeleton was recovered.
However, despite the discovery of more than 500 skeletons, there had been no meaningful progress beyond the recovery and counting of the remains, Sumanthiran pointed out.
