A young Tamil woman who was looking forward to getting married to her childhood sweetheart next Wednesday in Colombo, was among those evicted to the North yesterday, by the special orders from Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Twenty-three-year old Dharshani Selvam had already booked the reception hall and was living with her aged mother Saraswathie awaiting the bridegroom’s arrival in Colombo on Sunday. The bridegroom was to return to the country from London where he works.

Darsahni and her mother lived in a Colombo lodge ever since they moved to the South from Karaveddi in Jaffna following the death of Dharshini’s father.Yesterday’s predawn search operation shattered all the dreams of Darshani and her mother thus plunging their lives into uncertainty.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror the proprietor of the lodge who is an all island JP and a former Secretary of the Ceylon Teachers Congress - a trade union arm of the CWC - said that at around 4.00 a.m. yesterday a team of five police officers and three army personnel arrived at the lodge. They checked the 22 rooms in the lodge, questioned the inmates and left the place.

“They did not take a single inmate with them following the first raid. The unexpected happened in the second raid an hour later. Five police officers claiming to be from the Wellawatte police returned to the lodge and took away seven females and five males from five families. Saraswathie and Dharshini were among those who were removed from the lodge by the police,” he said.

“What am I going to tell the bridegroom when he comes on Sunday. The mother and daughter have nowhere to go in Karaweddi as they had mortgaged their house and property to raise money for the wedding,” he said..

“Saraswathie even showed police officers the receipt of payment made to the owner of the wedding hall where the ceremony was to take place but the police paid no heed. I am worried about their future and safety mostly because the police have asked us not to entertain anymore inmates hereafter” he added.

He has to think about his family and his own future, the lodge owner said. Police had warned them not to give lodgings to anyone from the North and East.

“This has been our only means of living in fact. Several families there are dependent on the lodge income for their livelihood. Now we have been deprived of our only livelihood,” he lamented.