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Gold Jewelleries Recovered from LTTE Returned to Rightful Owners

President Mahinda Rajapaksa Thursday (4) afternoon returned one more stock of identified gold jewelleries to rightful owners of the north during a special ceremony at Temple Trees.
 
Sri Lanka Army which had taken care of those gold jewelleries upon recovery after the troops stormed areas where the so-called ‘Tamil Eelam Banks’ and ‘Eelam Pawning Centres’ were operating at the time of humanitarian operations before May 2009 underwent painstaking efforts to identify rightful owners mainly due to non availability of proper documents at all with claimants or those in possession of partly-damaged or disfigured documents, etc after tracing the whereabouts or newly-resettled areas of those claimants.
 
Earlier on 12 Oct 2014, President Rajapaksa symbolically returning a segment of those jewelleries to 2377 legitimate owners under the first phase, gave back their valuables to a group of 25 owners in Kilinochchi.
 
Thursday’s (4) ceremony at Temple Trees saw a total of 1960 identified owners from Mannar (223), Vavuniya (319), Jaffna (45), Kilinochchi (1187) and Mullaittivu (186) receive their gold jewelleries from the Chief Guest at the ceremony, President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
 
However, another stock of jewelleries, belonging to 419 owners still remaining unclaimed is to be returned to the Central Bank in accordance with State Regulations and Provisions, if repeated attempts to find them through civil coordinating offices and other state agencies, was proved futile in the near future.   
 
In order to expedite the process for return of remaining jewelleries under safe-keeping, owners who still possess any LTTE issued pieces of evidence or acceptable or supportive documents to that effect, are encouraged to report to the nearest Civil Coordinating Offices in the north and place their claims for necessary onward process of identification.
 
Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Secretary to Ministry of Defence and Urban Development, Lieutenant General Daya Ratnayake, Commander of the Army and several invitees were present at the ceremony.
 
Sri Lanka Army facilitated the passage of all those claimants to Colombo by train on Thursday (4) and provided them with meals and other refreshments during the journey.
 
Two special trains brought the recipients to Colombo on Thursday (4), starting off from Kilinochchi.