Court orders CID to investigate Lankan suspects

Colombo Fort Magistrate Lanka Jayaratne ordered the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Interpol Unit to carry out investigations into three suspects who were allegedly involved in the gang rape of an 18-year-old Korean girl in 1998, in South Korea.

The CID yesterday filed a ‘B’ report before the court.

CID officials informed the Magistrate that the South Korean Police had investigated the incident where an 18-year-old Korean girl was killed in an accident on an expressway in Daegu City in South Korea in 1998.

CID also said that Korean Police had found the deceased girl’s underwear in a separate location and performed DNA tests on the sperm samples found in her underwear. “Korean authorities could not identify the real perpetrators of the crime, but they stored the DNA samples,” the CID said.

Meanwhile, 12 years after the crime, a Sri Lankan who was employed in Korea pleaded guilty to requesting an under-aged girl for sexual favours in exchange for money. Korean Police found that the accused Sri Lankan’s DNA matched the DNA of the sperm samples found in the underwear of the deceased. Korean officials had filed a case against this Sri Lankan before the Korean court, CID said.

The Korean court rejected the case due to the long period that had lapsed since the crime was committed. 

The two other suspects involved in this incident arrived in Sri Lanka later.

The Korean government requested Sri Lanka on August 28, 2017, to conduct investigations into the case. Earlier this year, a Korean delegation also visited Sri Lanka, after which the Attorney General had issued instructions to the CID to conduct investigations into this case.