WHEN MILLIONAIRES DIE YOUNG...

By Gihan Kamalesh Weerasinghe-2016-08-28

The Police Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) has begun probing the strong likelihood that billionaire businessman Mohammad Shakeeb Sulaiman of Bambalapitiya was brutally done to death by irate business competitors stemming from a dispute arising from a soured business deal or arising from debts owed to Sulaiman by some businessmen..
Police sources said that preliminary investigations had revealed that the slain businessman was considered a tough business opponent who was allegedly not averse to employing violence to further his business interests.
However, it is yet to be confirmed that his killing was the direct outcome of a business dispute or merely to extract ransom from his family. Police are following other leads also so as to not miss other probabilities linked to his killing with the objective of bringing his killers to book.

Sulaiman was an ethnic Bhai who was engaged in the wholesale textiles trade. Sulaiman and his family members imported and distributed clothing and textiles from India, China and Indonesia. His central trade operations were carried out at a well-established shop down Third Cross Street, Pettah.

The source said that apparently there had been some businessmen who were deep in the red in his books having failed to settle dues on textile stocks bought on credit from Sulaiman.
establishing links
Police records show he had made a complaint to this effect to the CID and the Colombo Fraud Investigation Bureau (CFIB) claiming that some businessmen, whose names were withheld by Police, owed him an aggregate Rs 80 million. The CID is investigating two complaints related to two businessmen owing Sulaiman Rs 40 million and Rs 30 million respectively. The CFIB is investigating two other complaints relating to Sulaiman being owed Rs 4.5 million and 3.3 million by traders.
The Police probe is concentrating in establishing links if any between these debts and Sulaiman's abduction and subsequent killing.

A complaint lodged by Sulaiman on 24 May with the CID has become central to the probe our source added.. A Bhai businessman was arrested by the CID over this complaint. He was produced in Court and released on bail the next day. The respondent's lawyers only argued that the debt owed to Sulaiman by their client was stated in excess of the real amount. Sulaiman and the other businessman were at daggers drawn on this dispute about the amount owed to him, Police have learned. Sulaiman had been abducted and killed not long after Court had postponed hearings in the case.

Suaiman, 29, received his education at an international school in Colombo. His wife, Shani, 24, also hails from a business family. Their two kids have now lost their father. Sulaiman has two married sisters. His family lived with their parents in the Kotalawala Road residence in Bambalapitiya.
On 21 August Sulaiman left home to attend the wedding of a Bhai friend at a reception hall in Kollupitiya. On that day, Sulaiman's parents had gone to India and his wife and kids stayed back at home.

Sulaiman arrived at the reception hall around 9.30 and left it an hour later after dinner. Another guest was with him. He was the brother of the earlier mentioned suspect. The man who left the wedding with Shakeeb was his friend. They came out of the reception hall to chat privately. They went to the Pilawoos Hotel in Wellawatta and Shakeeb called his wife while he was there. He wanted Shani to come there but the latter said she could not because the kids needed her as it was near bed time. She asked Shakeeb to bring dinner home.

grey car driven fast
He bought a packet of food and left the hotel after chatting a while over a cup of tea. He parked his car in front of the gate of his house and called his wife asking her to open the gate. When the wife came to the gate, she saw a grey car driven fast. Shakeeb was not in sight. The packet of food and Shakeeb's wrist watch had fallen to the ground. midst several blood stains.
Shani was alarmed and she called her relatives and the Bambalapitiya Police. Shakeeb's phone had been switched off.
Police began investigations almost immediately. There was no news about Shakeeb. His parents came back from India early the next morning after hearing of the abduction. Just as Shakeeb's father came home, he received a telephone call from a number registered in Kegalle.

"Your son is with us. If you want him released, give us Rs. 20 million. We will send the account number to deposit money soon," the caller said.
That call came in at 9 a.m. But the next call with the bank deposit directions never came. The Commercial Crimes Division picked up the investigation from then on under personal directions from IGP Pujith Jayasundara. SP Nishantha Silva put together several teams and deployed them on the investigation, each tasked to follow a different lead.

They inspected CCTV footage. The ransom call had been made over a communication centre land line on the Kalugalla Road, Kegalle. But investigations there drew a blank as there were no CCTV cameras in the immediate vicinity of the place from which that phone call was made. That indicated the killers had intentionally chosen that place for that specific call expressly because there were no CCTV cameras around.

That also indicated that the abduction was pre-planned. They had considered the CCTV cameras at Shakeeb's residence and in the immediate neighbourhood, but that too drew a blank. Shakeeb's father got the call just as he came home. Police suspect that a person close to the family has colluded in the crime.
After the passage of three days of fruitless investigations, Sulaiman's father decided to offer a one million rupee reward for information leading to his son's whereabouts. His business colleagues and Minister Rishad Bathiudeen who were in the house then proposed to increase the offer to Rs 5 million. Sulaiman's father announced the award to the media on August 24.
Meanwhile, Mawanella Police informed the CCD that a decomposed dead body had been discovered dumped in a deserted area close to Rukulagama on the Mawanella – Hemmathagama Road. The informant was R.M. Rajapaksa, the owner of the land who called the Police on 119.
A road-construction worker there had been the first to discover the body when he had gone there to fetch planks needed to use in laying concrete roadside storm water drains. The dead body already had signs of decomposition. The worker informed the land owner.

They had been getting a foul smell for a couple of days before that and they attributed it to a rotting animal carcass. The land was used to as a landfill including earth and waste material left over from road construction. A few more truckloads of soil could have covered the body from sight.

Investigations revealed the body was of a Muslim. The clothes were identified as being those worn by Sulaiman before his disappearance. The CCD immediately took a relative of the dead man to Mawanella and the body was identified as that of Sulaiman. For further verification, photographs were sent to Shakeeb's wife via Viber.

establish the exact spot