This was not merely because the three women were trained as counsellors but also because they were fellow survivors of Sri Lanka’s brutal war and familiar with all that it took away and left behind. Ms. Deepa, as Jayadeepa prefers being called, has been searching for her husband who went missing in May 2009, barely two years after their wedding. A decade after Ms. Saradadevi’s husband was shot dead by the Army, her son was conscripted by the LTTE. As the war intensified, her son was abducted and, her son-in law went missing in the final years. “If the government was serious about it, why did it outsource the process to civil society and later abandon us?” Ms. Deepa asked.

Source: The Hindu January 25, 2017 19:47 UTC