Published on - 6/20/2008
WOMAN POLICE CONSTABLE Menaka Jayatillaka (WPC 2440) of Vavuniya Police promised her mother to come home to attend the passing out parade of her sister at the Kalutara Police Training school and to look into the balance work of their house, but her fate had decreed otherwise.
Following day, her lifeless body was brought home by her colleagues. Menaka and eleven other police officers were among the victims of the suicide attack on June 16 in front of the Vavuniya police complex. Born on Apirl 5, 1983 at Palugollewa in Medawachchiya, to a family of four children Menaka had her primary education at Palugollewa Government School. After passing the year five scholarship examination she entered Anuradhapura Central College. However, she was compelled to give up higher education due to the untimely death of her father. She had to find employment in a private establishment to share her mother's endeavour to maintain the family. Menaka who joined the Police Department as a woman police constable in 2006, was attached to Vavuniya police. She was an efficient and popular police officer with an excellent command of Sinhala, Tamil and English languages. On the fateful day, Menaka left the barracks in the early morning to report for duty without an iota of feeling that she was heading for disaster. Just as she stepped on to the main road where several fellow officers were waiting for vehicles, the dreaded thing happened and Menaka fell dead instantaneously with her uniform splattered with blood. She breathed her last in front of the police barracks while all her hopes to attend her sister's passing out parade and to complete the partly-built house were shattered. (Courtesy: Daily Mirror)
