The archaeologist leading the Chemmani excavation has told a Jaffna court that the site bears greater resemblance to formal burial practices than to a clandestine grave — in a report that simultaneously records a minimum of 574 dead and says its own evidence is insufficient to reach a conclusion.
The document is the third interim report on the excavation, titled “Forensic Archaeological Excavation in Chemmani, Jaffna (2025/2026): A summary report on findings”. It is written by Raj Somadeva, a professor at the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology at the University of Kelaniya, and Anusha Wanninayake, The Island reported.
It was submitted to the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court on 19 October.
What the report counts
The findings run to 17 pages. They record:
- a minimum of 574 individuals
- 51 separate accumulations of disarticulated bones
- 170 artefact entries
By the report’s own preliminary estimate, 41 per cent of the dead were children and 22 per cent were infants.
That count continues an upward series this desk has tracked: the excavation stood at 507 sets of remains at the 100-day mark in August.
The sentence the report underlines
The report states that the evidence is “insufficient” for a definitive conclusion. It nonetheless singles out one sentence in its summary:
“Nevertheless, the artefacts and associated contextual evidence suggest that the site exhibits greater similarities to contexts characterised by formal burial practices than to clandestine burial sites documented in other parts of the world.”
It goes on to suggest that if the burials “resulted from an epidemic or another form of natural catastrophe”, a scarcity of objects buried with the dead “would not necessarily be unexpected.”
The report does not name any epidemic or disaster in Jaffna that could account for hundreds of deaths. That absence is central to how the document has been received.
The seated skeletons
The Island relays reporting by the Tamil Guardian that the report pays particular attention to two skeletons, numbered 227 and 429, found in a seated position.
Seated burial is documented in certain Hindu religious traditions, linked to the practices of Samādhi and Jīva Samādhi, in which a spiritually accomplished person may be buried sitting upright. The Tamil Guardian notes that the posture alone does not establish such a connection.
What the report does not determine
On the account published, the report does not establish how or why those buried at Chemmani died, when they were buried, or who buried them. It does not rule out unlawful killing.
It contains no scientific dating of the remains and no analysis of the bones for injury or disease — the two categories of evidence that would ordinarily distinguish a burial ground from a grave.
A finding that a site resembles formal burial is therefore not, on this report’s own terms, a finding about the cause of the deaths. The two questions are separate, and only the first is addressed.
Not reported
The filing does not report any response from the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court to the interim report, give a date for the next hearing, or say whether further excavation or laboratory analysis has been ordered.
It does not report the positions of the Attorney-General’s Department, the Office on Missing Persons, or the families of the disappeared, and does not say whether a final report is due or when.
On sourcing. One verified newsroom carried this story at the time of writing. A search of the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing, NewsFirst’s homepage and Hiru’s homepage found no filing on the interim report from any of the three. Ada Derana could not be checked, its site having returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than a month. The Tamil Guardian, which obtained a copy of the report and has reported critically on it, carries no extractable publication date and is therefore described above rather than cited as a dated source.
Source: The Island.