Skip to content
Himal Southasian
Sign in Sign up

Twenty years later, Tamil broadcaster Relangi Selvarajah’s killers still remain unknown

Relangi Selvarajah’s killing in 2005 is a reminder of the risks faced by critics of Tamil militancy and the LTTE during Sri Lanka’s civil war – and of the persisting impunity around crimes against journalists in the country

By Ramkumar Ravichchandrasarma
An art performance of laying down handprints in red paint on a white sheet to remember Black January which remembers journali
A live performance art installation and a candlelight ceremony at Viharamahadevi Park in Colombo at an event for Black January, which commemorates journalist killings. Twenty years later, the killers of Relangi Selvarajah, a popular television and radio broadcaster, remains unknown.
Published:
Share to X Share to Bluesky Share to Facebook Share to LinkedIn Share by email

This story is published in collaboration with the Free Media Movement of Sri Lanka as part of a series around Black January, which commemorates crimes against Sri Lanka’s journalists. It has been translated from Tamil and edited.

RELANGI SELVARAJAH captivated audiences with her magnetic voice – first as an actor, and later as a broadcaster. Her father, the renowned theatre practitioner K K V Sellaya, encouraged her love of dance and passion for acting. In time, she won respect as a senior journalist with deep knowledge of politics, society and economics, becoming a radio announcer and television anchor. This prominence would prove to be her undoing. 

This August marked 20 years since Relangi Selvarajah’s death. However, no proper investigations have been conducted into her killing. It has simply been reported that she and her husband were shot dead by “unknown gunmen”, with the identity of their killers a matter of speculation. 

Coming from an artistic background, Relangi studied the classical dance form bharatanatyam from the age of five. She became an excellent dancer and later taught at the Meesalai Veerasingam Mahavidyalaya in Jaffna district, in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. Relangi also acted in several stage plays produced by her father, which opened the door to her first film role. In 1978, she starred in the Sri Lankan-Tamil film Theivam Thantha Veedu, a love story between a dancer and a nadaswaram musician. She won the best actress award at the national film awards for her portrayal of the dancer, Kumudini.