The questions posed by over 500 human remains found at Sri Lanka’s Chemmani mass grave

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A HEADLESS human skeleton with both hands bound and held against its chest was reportedly found at the Chemmani-Siththupathi mass grave in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, on Saturday, August 8. The discovery came as the excavation crossed 100 days, with 515 sets of human remains now identified at the site.

The scale of the excavation has renewed attention on an allegation that dates back to Sri Lanka’s civil war: that hundreds of Tamil civilians who disappeared after the Sri Lankan military recaptured Jaffna in 1995 were killed and buried in the Chemmani area.

The skeleton found last week was, as per a report in the Tamil Guardian, found lying in what appeared to be a normal resting position but without its skull. The neck had been severed, and both hands were bound and placed against the chest.

Notably, this is not the first headless set of remains to be found at Chemmani. In earlier excavations, investigators also found remains where the head and body lie separated, including some in which the neck appeared to have been severed. A skeleton that was bound and blindfolded was also recovered from the site during an earlier excavation in 1999.

By August 9, a total of 515 sets of human remains had been unearthed at the site, of which 506 have been fully exhumed. The remains include those of children and infants. Around 150 items have also been recovered as evidence by the time the excavation crossed 100 days.

But while the excavation has established that hundreds of people were buried at the site, several crucial questions remain unanswered. The people whose remains have been found have not yet been identified, and Sri Lanka’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) told the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court in July that it had not yet been established whether a crime had taken place.

So, what do we know about the mass grave and what could the ongoing excavation establish?

How Chemmani became associated with mass graves

Chemmani first came under scrutiny in 1998, during the trial of Sri Lankan soldiers accused of the rape and murder of 18-year-old Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy.

One of the accused, soldier Somaratne Rajapakse, testified that hundreds of Tamils who had disappeared while in the custody of security forces had been killed and buried in the Chemmani area. He said he knew of between 300 and 400 bodies buried there.

His testimony led to excavations in 1999, when 15 skeletons were recovered. A government investigation later reported that 10 of the remains showed evidence of assault and murder. One of the skeletons was found bound and blindfolded.

The investigation did not lead to further excavation of the site, and the allegations surrounding Chemmani remained unresolved for decades.

The current excavation has revealed more than 500 sets of remains, exceeding the 300–400 bodies Rajapakse had referred to in his testimony nearly three decades ago.

Why the excavation began again

Chemmani came back into focus in February 2025, when construction work near a Hindu cremation ground uncovered human skeletal remains. The Jaffna Magistrate’s Court subsequently ordered a forensic excavation and work began in May 2025 under judicial supervision.

The first two phases spanned 54 days. During this time, up to 240 sets of human remains were found, of which 239 were fully exhumed.

The excavation was then halted in September 2025 after funding ran out. It resumed in April 2026, after the Sri Lankan government allocated 21 million Sri Lankan rupees for the third phase.

The latest phase has accounted for hundreds of additional remains, standing at 515 after 101 days of excavation. Investigators have recovered remains of adults, children, and infants lying close together, stacked on top of one another, and in clusters. In one instance, a larger set of remains appeared to have been positioned around a smaller set. Some were found in a seated position. 

The excavation has also turned up several belongings that appear to have been buried with the bodies. These include a child’s milk-feeding bottle, a blue school bag, bangles, footwear, socks, a ring, a talisman, coins, and children’s toys.

Chemmani has now become the largest mass grave site uncovered in Sri Lanka, surpassing the Mannar Sathosa site.

Do the findings indicate that the people were killed?

The manner in which some of the remains have been found has raised questions about the deaths of the people buried at Chemmani. But the excavation has not yet established the cause of these deaths. The discovery of bound remains and bodies where the head and torso were separated is significant in this context. 

In 2025, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka said more than 90% of the remains examined at that point had no clothing, while many had been buried in a disordered manner in shallow graves. The commission said there was a reasonable likelihood that the burials were unlawful and pursuant to extrajudicial killings.

A forensic investigation would have to establish the identities of the dead, the causes and circumstances of their deaths, and whether there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Chemmani and Sri Lanka’s civil war

Sri Lanka’s civil war lasted from 1983 to 2009, when government forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which had fought for a separate Tamil state in the north and east. The conflict followed decades of ethnic tensions between Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese population and its Tamil minority. The United Nations has estimated that up to 1 lakh people were killed during the conflict, while thousands more were forcibly disappeared.

Jaffna, where Chemmani is located, was under military control from 1995 until the end of the war. The allegation made by Rajapakse in 1998 specifically concerned people who had disappeared after the military recaptured Jaffna.

The current excavation is therefore significant to Tamil families who have spent decades looking for relatives who disappeared during the conflict. They have not known whether their loved ones were alive, detained, or killed and buried somewhere in an unmarked grave.

At present, however, there is no evidence establishing how many, if any, of those found at Chemmani are among the disappeared.

How many people disappeared during the war?

There is no single agreed figure for the number of people who were forcibly disappeared in Sri Lanka during the conflict.

Amnesty International has estimated that as many as 1 lakh people were forcibly disappeared during the war. The UN has attributed much of the responsibility for enforced disappearances to Sri Lankan security forces and affiliated paramilitary groups. The LTTE has also been accused of carrying out disappearances and other abuses.

Sri Lanka’s Office on Missing Persons (OMP), established in 2017 to investigate the fate of missing people, has records of more than 23,000 cases. At a UN committee hearing in September 2025, a Sri Lankan delegation said the OMP had traced 23 people.

The UN human rights office, however, has raised concerns about the OMP’s independence and said the institution had lost the trust of victims’ communities.

Why families are calling for an international probe

Families of the disappeared and Tamil rights groups have repeatedly called for international involvement in the investigation, saying they have little faith in Sri Lanka’s domestic mechanisms after years of stalled investigations into disappearances and mass graves.

In July 2026, when a delegation that included ambassadors from the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands visited Chemmani, the relatives of the disappeared staged a protest and handed over a memorandum calling for an international investigation into the site.

Their concerns are also shaped by what happened at other mass grave sites in Sri Lanka.

In 2018, excavations near Sacred Heart Church in Mannar uncovered 346 skeletons, including those of 29 children. The victims have not been identified, and the excavation did not lead to prosecutions.

Families and rights groups fear that Chemmani could meet a similar fate unless the remains are identified and the investigation is carried out transparently.

The Sri Lankan government has maintained that accountability should be pursued through domestic processes. In September 2025, Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told the UN Human Rights Council that external action would create divisions, and said the Chemmani investigation was being conducted independent of government interference.

Why haven’t the victims been identified?

Despite more than 500 sets of remains being recovered, the identification process has not yet begun. Identification can involve examining the remains to establish characteristics such as age and sex, studying injuries, conducting DNA tests, and comparing the results with samples from relatives of people reported missing. Objects found alongside the remains can also provide leads.

Tamil activists and relatives of the disappeared have called for DNA testing so that the remains can be compared with families who have been searching for missing relatives.

Investigators are also trying to establish whether the burial site extends beyond the area currently being excavated. As part of the third phase, two randomly positioned test pits were dug outside the main excavation area. Human remains were found in one of them.

The test pits are intended to establish whether burials extend beyond the area already under investigation. If they do, the total number of remains at Chemmani could eventually be higher than the 515 identified so far.