Jeshanika Thivanithan was in grade 8 at St Cecilia’s Girls College in Batticaloa and excelled at extra curricular. The second of three daughters, Jeshanika’s death at the hands of suicide bombers on Easter Sunday has devastated her family.
On Sunday, April 21, thirteen-year-old Jeshanika and her sister, ten-year-old Jeromika, were attending Sunday school at the Zion Church of Batticaloa. They were sitting on the church’s staircase when the first blast went off.
Jeromika noticed that her unconscious sister’s nose was bleeding, having sustained a head injury from the blast. She called a Sunday school teacher who called for further help for Jeshanika.
As she was being carried out to be taken to hospital, a second blast occurred. The already wounded Jeshanika was scorched to death, her body charred beyond recognition.
Jeshanika’s parents James Thivanithan and Hemamalini spent the entire day of the incident searching for her, unaware of her fate. They finally identified her body at the Batticaloa Teaching Hospital morgue on the Sunday evening.
James and Hemamalini said they were unsure if their family, and especially Jeromika, the traumatised witness and survivor, would ever recover from the events of Easter Sunday.
