Update (Monday evening): Hiru News reports that police are investigating the death as suspicious and that a magistrate’s inquest has been scheduled. Jump to the update.
Sri Lankan model Chula Padmendra Kumarapathirana, a long-standing figure in the country’s fashion industry, has died at the age of 46.
The Daily Mirror described her as a well-known model and catwalk and pageant trainer, popularly known as ‘Chula’. NewsFirst said she was widely recognised as a prominent figure in Sri Lanka’s fashion and modelling industry and had earned admiration and respect for her contribution to the field over many years.
Her death has been felt across the local fashion community, where she was known as an experienced modelling professional.
Neither outlet reported a cause of death. Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of publication.
Update: police treat the death as suspicious
Police have opened an investigation into the death and a magistrate’s inquest has been scheduled, Hiru News reported on Monday evening. Hiru said police described her as having been found dead “under suspicious circumstances” on a bed at a house belonging to a businessman in Wewala, Piliyandala.
According to Hiru’s account of the initial police investigation, she arrived at the house with the businessman early on Monday, after an event she had organised at a hotel in Battaramulla. He found her lying face down and unresponsive, and called the 1990 Suwa Seriya ambulance service when he was unable to wake her. Emergency medical personnel confirmed her death at the scene, and the businessman then lodged a complaint with Piliyandala Police.
Hiru attributed the account to a local reporter rather than to a named officer. The businessman is not named in the report, and Hiru did not say that he has been arrested, detained or accused of anything. No cause of death has been established or reported.
In Sri Lankan practice, a death classified as suspicious is referred for a magistrate’s inquest as a matter of procedure, and that classification is not in itself a finding that a crime took place.
No other verified newsroom has carried the circumstances
The details above rest on Hiru News alone. Ada Derana, the Daily Mirror and NewsFirst had all published on the death by Monday evening, and none of the three has reported the location, the businessman, the police investigation or the inquest. The Daily Mirror and NewsFirst reports remain the plain death notices summarised above; a check of Ada Derana’s latest-news listing on Monday night found no item on the death at all.
LankaNewz has not been able to corroborate Hiru’s account through a second verified newsroom, and it is presented here as that outlet’s reporting.
A note on the name
The two newsrooms render her name differently. NewsFirst gives it as Chula Padmendra Kumarapathirana, as two words; the Daily Mirror writes Chulpadmendra Kumarapathirana as one. Both agree on the shortened form she was known by, ‘Chula’, and on her age. LankaNewz has used the two-word form in the headline and has not established which spelling she used professionally.
Several aggregator sites carried fuller accounts of her career and of the circumstances of her death on Monday, ahead of Hiru’s report. Those accounts included details — a training studio, an international pageant award and a description of how she fell ill — that still have not appeared in reporting by a verified newsroom, and they are not repeated here. Hiru’s report, set out above, is the only account of the circumstances that comes from a verified newsroom, and it does not describe her as having fallen ill.
