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# Navy Women Guarded and Abused Detainees at Secret Trincomalee Site, Witnesses Tell Police
- URL: https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/featured/navy-women-guarded-and-abused-detainees-at-secret-trincomalee-site-witnesses-tell-police/
- Published: 2026-09-25T11:12:12.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-25T11:17:56.000Z
- Author: Our Reporter
- Tags: JM Exclusive, September 2026

**JAFFNA, Sri Lanka —** Former detainees at a secret underground facility inside the Trincomalee Naval Base told investigators that two women sailors helped guard and question prisoners there, and that one of them ordered a detainee to strip and masturbate while she watched, according to police reports filed in a Sri Lankan court.

The two women, retired petty officers Kodagoda Hewa Vitharana Deepika Sandamali and Aruni Dinusha Kaus, were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department on Sept. 20 in connection with the disappearance of two Tamil women from Trincomalee in 2008\. They have been remanded until Oct. 5, when the court has ordered an identification parade. Both have denied wrongdoing.

The filings, reviewed by Jaffna Monitor, contain statements from four people who were either held at the site, known as Gun Site, or lost relatives there. Their accounts describe detainees held for years in cells without daylight, among them schoolchildren, foreign nationals and former members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and prisoners who were led out of the cells and not seen again.

A former senior member of the LTTE, whose identity is protected under Section 127 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, told investigators he was taken into Navy custody at Pulmoddai on May 12, 2009, and placed in an underground bunker in a forested part of the base. He said about 22 people were held in six cells there, including four schoolchildren, a married couple, three men brought from Colombo, and two Tamil women kept in a separate cell.

He named Ms. Sandamali and Ms. Kaus among the Navy personnel guarding the detainees. He said the two Tamil women were taken out of their cell after two days and were never brought back. The filing does not identify them.

The same witness said Ms. Kaus and another female officer came to his cell one day, told him to remove his sarong and masturbate, and watched him, laughing. He told investigators the episode left him severely humiliated. He also said a former LTTE member working as a Navy informant sexually assaulted him, and that he was beaten until he lost consciousness.

A second former LTTE member told the CID he was handed to the Navy by the Trincomalee police on April 14, 2009, and held in the underground cells until Nov. 9, 2011\. He said Ms. Sandamali and Ms. Kaus were among those who interrogated him. He said three Indonesians and two Indians were held with him, and that a Muslim detainee and two others were taken from the cells one day and did not return.

A third former detainee, captured at sea off Trincomalee in April 2009 and held until September 2012, told investigators that one of his interrogators said the Navy had killed the prisoners held before him. "You are the only ones left," the interrogator told him, according to the filing. He said that while cleaning a cell, he later found children's clothes, school bags and books, and concluded that children had been held there and killed.

The case that led to the arrests concerns Sasikumar Thenmoli and Mary Delsia of Paalaiyootru in Trincomalee, who disappeared in 2008\. The CID has told the court that the two women were held at Gun Site while the suspects were in active service and were later reported missing.

Mary Delsia's brother told investigators that Ms. Sandamali and Ms. Kaus were among 12 Navy personnel he holds responsible for the disappearance of his sister and Ms. Thenmoli. He said about 100 people were held at Gun Site on the orders of the Navy commander at the time, Wasantha Karannagoda, and that the cells were run by an officer named D.K.P. Dassanayake.

The filings also record an attempt to pressure the brother. After he gave a statement to the CID on Oct. 29, 2025, he said a man who had served in naval intelligence called him twice on WhatsApp, asked what he had told investigators, and urged him to file a police complaint accusing CID officers of harassment. He gave a secret statement to the Mutur Magistrate the next day.

Ms. Sandamali and Ms. Kaus had earlier told the CID that they worked in a special naval intelligence unit under Mr. Dassanayake, but said their duties were administrative and that they had no role in treating detainees. They are also on bail in a separate case over the disappearance of a man named Shantha from Alawwa in Kegalle District, and were arrested last month when they reported to the CID to sign under their bail conditions.

A former Navy commander, Nishantha Ulugetenne, told CID investigators in 2025 that the site was not a legal place of detention and that it was run by a "Special Intelligence Unit" outside the Navy's formal intelligence structure, according to reports. The site takes its name from an old gun emplacement on a small hill and contains colonial-era structures, including underground cells with no natural light.