In 1998, allegations of mass graves at Chemmani were made by a Sri Lankan soldier on trial for rape and murder.
He claimed hundreds of people who disappeared from the Jaffna peninsula after it was retaken by Government troops from the LTTE in 1995 and 1996 were killed and buried in mass graves near the village of Chemmani.
[4] In July 1998, Sri Lankan Army Lance Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse, facing a death sentence for the rape and murder of student Krishanti Kumaraswamy and her family, made allegations about the existence of mass graves in Jaffna containing the bodies of those who had disappeared from the peninsula in previous years.
[5] Rajapakse and his co-defendants gave the names of 20 security force personnel allegedly responsible for the killings.
[citation needed] In December, a government team of investigators reported that 10 of the remains, including one skeleton that was bound and blindfolded, showed evidence of assault and murder.