Mannar Magistrate Alexraja Asirawatham ordered yesterday to send human skeletons which were unearthed from a mass grave in Thirukketheeswaram, Mannar abroad for DNA testing.

Attorney-at-law V. S. Niranjan claimed that skeletons will be sent either to Guatemala, Yugoslavia, or Argentina under court’s approval.

Dhananjaya Waidyaratne, the Judicial Medical Officer who was in charge of the excavation of the mass grave stated that DNA testing could be done in Sri lankan laboratories and it was unnecessary to send skeletons abroad.

Excavations of the site came to halt since CID claimed the site to be a graveyard. However, families of the disappeared continued to demand further excavation of the mass grave saying that CID report was false. Mannar Magistrate ordered DNA testing because of the controversies.

Mass grave in Thirukketheeswaram was first discovered in December 2013, when construction workers found few human skeletons whilst digging in lay pipes. Upon excavation which followed, 81 skeletons were unearthed in 2014.