A tragic shadow has fallen over Sabaragamuwa University after 23-year-old Charith Dilshan, a second-year engineering student, took his own life—driven, his devastated family claims, by relentless bullying at the hands of fellow students.
Charith had returned home to Ihalagama, Gampola, on April 28 after attending the university’s Avurudu festival. The next evening, April 29, his body was found hanging behind his house. What should have been a joyful new year celebration ended in unbearable sorrow.
His grieving mother, holding back tears, recounted the emotional torment her son suffered. “He tortured my son. He stripped him of his underwear, banged his head against the wall, and threw him into a cupboard. My son returned home and couldn’t even look me in the eyes. He whispered to me, ‘Don’t let children suffer like this again.’”
According to the family, this wasn’t an isolated incident. Charith’s father said his son had endured two years of harassment and humiliation at university. “They broke him slowly,” he said. “I’ve lost my son. I beg the authorities—don’t let another child go through what he did. Enforce the law. End this violence.”
Charith’s suicide has sparked widespread outrage and urgent calls for an investigation into bullying and ragging practices within Sri Lankan universities. The incident at the Avurudu festival appears to have been the breaking point—where the weight of sustained psychological abuse became too much for him to bear.
Police are now investigating, and student groups across the country are demanding accountability. But for Charith’s family, no investigation will bring back the boy who once dreamed of becoming an engineer.
They now carry only his final words, etched in a mother’s memory: “Don’t let other children suffer like this.”
