A group that broke into a Tamil national school at Dickoya forced open storage cupboards in the school hall and set fire to the documents inside them — including pupils’ books, examination question papers and birth certificates, police say.
The break-in happened at about 3.00 p.m. on Saturday 24 October, Hiru News reported, citing Norwood Police.
The group broke the doors of cupboards standing in the school hall, pulled the documents stored in them out onto the floor and set them alight. The principal saw smoke and flames coming from the hall that afternoon and acted immediately to put the fire out, which stopped it spreading further into the building.
A large quantity of children’s books and school records was destroyed.
The principal has lodged a complaint with Norwood Police, who are investigating to identify and arrest those responsible.
The birth certificates are the serious loss
Books and question papers can be replaced. Birth certificates held by a school are not the originals — they are the certified copies a school keeps on file to establish a pupil’s age and identity for registration, for public examination entry and for the issue of results.
Destroying them does not erase a child’s civil registration, which sits with the Registrar General. But it does oblige each affected family to obtain a fresh certified copy, at their own cost and in their own time, before the school can satisfy the documentary requirements that attach to examinations. In a plantation-district school that is a real administrative burden falling on households, not on the institution that lost the papers.
No filing says how many pupils are affected or whether any examination deadline is close.
The school’s name
Hiru’s Sinhala report calls the school “හොන්සි” (Honsi) Tamil Maha Vidyalaya. The school’s own trilingual nameboard reads N/HORNSEY COLLEGE (NATIONAL SCHOOL) in English, alongside the Tamil நு/ஹொன்சி கல்லூரி. “Honsi” is the Sinhala and Tamil transliteration of Hornsey, a plantation-era English name of the kind common in the Dickoya and Norwood tea districts.
The Ministry of Education’s school register lists the institution as Hornsey College, also recorded as Pulliyawate Tamil Maha Vidyalaya, a Tamil-medium school in the Nuwara Eliya district of the Central Province teaching grades 6 to 13. This report uses the name the school itself displays.
Not reported
No filing gives a motive, says how many people were involved, or states how the group entered the premises or whether the school was occupied at the time. None says whether anything was stolen as well as burned, or puts a value on the damage.
It is not reported whether the hall was locked, whether the school has since reported the loss to the education authorities, or whether any arrest has followed.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the incident at the time of writing.