Sampalthoddam is a village three miles along Mannar road from Vavuniya town. Today this is called Navalarpannai. The time was early 1984 prior to the Thimbu talks which was late 1984.
A survivor who remains anonymous describes the event as she remembers it:
“People were returning from a wedding in a privately hired bus. The SLA stopped the bus near Pambaimadu and took all 70 people on the bus to a teak estate called Thekkavaththai. There, the SLA sent the 15 women and children who were in the bus and made the remaining 55 men look at the teak trees and then sprayed them with bullets.
The SLA then kicked the bodies that have fallen to see if they were still alive, those who made any noise in pain were shot again. One person fell to the ground in shock and was not hit by any of the bullets. Two of the men, who were shot, fell on top of him and died. He was thus lying in a pool of blood. When the SLA kicked his body he did not make any noise and the SLA thought he was dead too. When the SLA left, he ran to a village called Thalampokkanai. In this village there was a Muslim community leader who was very close to the Tamils and was a strong supporter of the LTTE. He owned a shop. The man ran to his shop and told the Muslim leader what has happened. From there the man went to Jaffna without telling the police, as he was so scared. The villagers went to the sight of the massacre and the news of the incident soon spread.
I heard that the man was given protection and sent somewhere safe. I do not know what happened to him after that. We went and looked at the massacre sight. It was very close to where we were living. We noticed that there were no bodies of women there. The man had said that the women were made to get off the bus. We do not know what happened to the women. The women did not give any statements.”