Blood Lust (40 page)

Dr Devadass asked Karthigesu if he would
undergo a narco-analysis test to help the people investigating the case. This
was an analysis of the subject’s mind for memories, events and emotions past or
present by injecting a drug into him. It allowed a person to talk freely
without emotional blocks or without resistance about what was going on in his
mind. However, Karthigesu said he did not want to undergo the test because he
might say what the police wanted him to say, which was that he had killed Jean.
Dr Devadass said Karthigesu told him he felt the quarrels and unpleasant things
between him and ‘this woman’ would come out and he didn’t want that. Karthigesu
maintained that he had told everything and there was nothing more to say. Dr
Devadass said that throughout the interview Karthigesu referred to Jean only
once by her name. Karthigesu lost his temper on three occasions. He was very
angry and upset that the police interrogation had been very humiliating but he
had managed to check his anger. He was sad and in tears when stating that he
missed his family. On the third occasion he was very angry when talking about
‘that woman’. He said agrily that other men could have killed her. It need not
have been him because she was ‘that kind of a woman’. He said that even when
his brother was alive Jean had been ‘like that’.

Asked by the DPP if Karthigesu had said:
‘She had been an unfaithful woman for a long time to many men and so others
could have had reasons to kill her’, Dr Devadass said that summed up what
Karthigesu had said. Answering another question, Dr Devadass said Karthigesu
did not express warm feelings towards Jean. Neither did he express sadness.
Later, Dr Devadass said, “Using my total assessment, I can conclude that his
story of the event is not true.”

At the preliminary inquiry on 17 Sept 1979,
Mabel Perera, Jean’s mother, told the Court that she knew Jean had an interest
in marrying Karthigesu at one stage. That was before Jean met Dr Warnasurya.
After she met the doctor Jean was undecided. She did not want to marry
Karthigesu if he insisted on having his mother, brother and sister staying with
them. Mabel Perera said she told Karthigesu that Jean did not want to live with
his mother. She advised Karthigesu to rent a house for Jean and live with Jean
and the children, but he told her not to interfere in his affairs.

Mabel Perera was also aware that Jean, while
agreeing to marry Karthigesu on certain conditions, was receiving love letters
from Dr Warnasurya.

Cross-examined by Mr Ponnudurai (for
Karthigesu), Mabel Perera denied that Jean was beyond control at the age of 14
and was therefore sent to a convent school in Malacca. Jean was sent to Malacca
to do her Cambridge examinations at the age of 16 because there were no science
classes that year in the Kajang convent. The convent school in Malacca was a
boarding school.

At the request of defence counsel, Mabel
Perera read out letters Jean wrote to Karthigesu on 11, 14, 18 June and 2 July
1978. The letter dated 11 June read:

         Darling
Selvam,

   It is 10:00
pm
according to your watch which is just in front of me. I
look left and see the cigarette butts your lips have touched. To the right,
just below is your briefcase and just beyond is the waste basket in which I can
see four empty cigarette boxes besides your other rubbish. All your books,
papers, shoes and everything to make me feel your presence, and yet I am
feeling lonely. Selvam, the weekdays pass so soon but the weekends for me are
torturesome-let me use that word please. I get pleasure in seeing you and
hearing you but that is not enough for me. I feel walled away from you, unable
to touch you, to feel your arms around me, holding me tight, your lips pressed so
warmly against mine. Darling, don’t think me crazy, but though I have been
married six years what I am going through now is no different from the same way
I felt six and half years ago. Only at that time there was a different you, and
yet it seems the same to me now. I saw you grind today and my heart would not
allow it. Though you did it with pleasure I just could not accept it. Don’t ask
me why but somehow it did not look right to me.

Another portion of the same letter read:

Please let this Saturday, the 17 come soon. I
want to feel the closeness to you for much longer than the hurried few hours we
have always had. I don’t want to think of barriers of time or conscience
because I feel they should not be barriers to us. If being together for some
time can hurt no one but only enhance our relationship then we should allow
ourselves that. Darling, good night and sweet dreams. All my love most tender
and pure with the most passionate of kisses.

Yours alone,

Jean.

The letter dated 14 June 1978:

Selvam darling,

   I have just come into this little room
here and your watch says it is 10:35
pm
.
I have a pile of books to mark but before I do so let me tell you what I wish I
could have done this evening. There I was carrying Rohini caressing her with
words of love and answering her questions about when you would come home, when
you would drive home with Indran at your side. My dearest, you will live to be
a very old man and a much needed old man, sweetheart. You looked so drawn and
fatigued—your hair dishevelled, your face dry with driving. I wish I could have
run and given you a welcome home hug. I would have brought you a hot drink,
then while you sat in the lounge I would have removed your shoes and socks.
Yes, I did all these things to that other you—that’s why my heart cries to
think I can’t do it now, not yet. You probably would not have ventured out then
that night I would have covered you with kisses and given you a massage with
baby oil. You would have no choice but to respond to me, and I can just imagine
how you would have made love to me. Oh, darling I miss you especially at nights
when I am alone. Though the children are there it isn’t like one complete
fruit. Only one half and the seeds are there. I miss the comfort of your strong
arms, the contentment of knowing you are there, different from your brother and
the more you say things like ‘we wore two shirts before etc etc,’ the more
convinced I am that you belong to me, Dana, Rohini and Malini as well.
Goodnight, sweetheart and one very long and passionate kiss goes with this.

Yours,

Jean.

P.S. Now don’t crush and throw this letter.
Doesn’t one normally keep such things from one’s loved ones to read and laugh
about in one’s old age?

The portion of the letter dated 2 July which
was read out was:

My dearest, I know beyond any shadow of doubt
that as your brother promised me I will live to die with the thali round my
neck and when that day when you will make me rightfully yours come, I will once
again make you promise that this time nothing is going to separate us, until
age prevents it. My dearest, when you kiss me and you join me in complete
union, I have felt time stand still. I can feel it is the same for you. Don’t
you forget everything else for those moments ... and then when we relax don’t
we feel supremely contented and at peace? Oh my darling, let me cradle your
head in the intimate way as only a wife can whisper all the tender words of
comfort and support that a man needs, for however strong a man is and however
proud he can be there is always the moment when he needs not a father or
mother, brother or sister but a wife. Let me be that woman, my sweetheart ...
let me be her soon for then I promise you, your burdens if ever they appear
will be lightened as I share them with you. I watched you as you washed your
car and how my heart cried because I could not come to help you. I would have
under different circumstances and still more my heart hurts to see you limp
while working. Please, my darling, I want to see that it is attended to. That
leg is precious if not to you at least to me. How many times I have kissed that
foot at night while you have been sound asleep and unaware of it.

The letter was signed ‘Your very own Jean’.

A reporter went to the home of Jean’s
mother, Mabel Perera, in Kajang. He asked her reactions to the statement made
in Court by Jayatilake that she coached him. She said: “We deny ever having
coached Jayatilake on any occasion. We hope truth prevails in the end. We are
leaving the matter to the Court of law to decide.” Brian Perera, Jean’s
brother, told the reporter: “I have lost my sister Jean. We don’t wish another
life to be taken. As for Karthigesu we have nothing against him over what took
place or transpired in the past. He has been freed by a Court of law. We abide
by its decision. I am glad it is all over.”

ON JUNE 12 1983, THE SUNDAY MAIL, a
popular Malaysian newspaper front-paged the news that one of its reporters, R.
Nadeswaran, had talked to Dr Narada Warnasurya. In Colombo on a short holiday,
the reporter approached him. Dr Warnasurya was evasive and pleaded that he be
left alone. “But I convinced him that he had to speak up to clear several
innocent people whose names could have been tarnished by allegations made
during the trial.” The reporter did not identify these people. What
allegations?

The reporter asked: Why did Dr Warnasurya
refuse to testify? After all, if he was to do justice to Jean he should have
openly come to Court to tell his story. That was the reporter’s opinion. Dr
Warnasurya did not share it. Said he: “There was no way in which my testimony
would have helped in the trial. I had alway told myself that anything I did
should benefit the dead person or her family.” Dr Warnasurya said he contacted
a prominent criminal lawyer in Sri Lanka who advised him that he was not
legally bound to fulfill the request made by the Malaysian police. The lawyer
said it was up to him. “But he asked me to consider whether what I am going to
say would help the dead person or her family. After all, my only connection
with the trial was that I had an affair with the deceased. Other than that I
would not have been in a situation to say anything more.”

Dr Warnasurya told the reporter that he
could not answer most of the questions mentioned in the police questionnaire.
Consequently he decided that “from the legal point of view, I would not be of
very much help to the trial.”

From the moral point of view Dr Warnasurya
said he had to consider his contribution to bring to justice those responsible
for Jean’s death. He said he was aware the police had recovered the letters he
had written to Jean, therefore he concluded that since the police
knew the contents of the letters there was nothing
more he could add.

The doctor told the reporter that he was
under severe pressure from “those who visited me in the house.” They gave him a
variety of reasons why he should fly to Malaysia. Dr Warnasurya told the
reporter: “My decision was based on the fact that anything I say must benefit the
dead person or her children. Under these circumstances I decided once and for
all that no matter what kind of pressure was put on me, my answer would be no,
and I stuck to that.”