Buildup of violence 22 May Further information on the preparations being made to attack the Tamils had become apparent to the Federal Party leadership. A large armed crowd of Sinhala labourers (around 500) from the Land Development and Irrigation departments had gathered at Polonnaruwa ready to attack the Tamils. The Police did nothing to stop them and just looked on. To retaliate, Sinhala hardliners decided to disrupt Tamils travelling to the convention by rail. Polonnaruwa station was the first to be attacked, on 22 May. Most passengers of the train had gotten off earlier due to the threat of violence in Polonnaruwa. One man was found in the train, and the mobs beat him despite his insistence that he was not a Tamil. Another man, Mr. Gnanamuttu, a Tamil notary public was also beaten up.
S. J. V. Chelvanayakam argued that it was unlikely that any person with abiding interests in the Batticaloa area would have carried out the derailment, and said that one possible motive for it was to derail a train expected to carry Tamil delegates to the Federal Party convention. However, this is disputed by historian James Manor who suggests that the perpetrators were more likely to be Tamils retaliating for the earlier attack in Polonnaruwa given that the derailment took place in a Tamil-majority area where anti-Sinhalese violence was rising. Sinhalese who were believed to be hiding Tamils "had their brains strewn about". Polonnaruwa had only a small police presence. Requests for reinforcements were not heeded as the Government seemed reluctant to take the situation in the North Central Province seriously. The rioters were tenacious, believing that the police would not shoot at them. The Polonnaruwa station was attacked again on 24 May, and nearly destroyed. S. W. R. D. Banadaranaike claimed that when the police went to the scene to investigate, they found the road blocked and were shot at too. Furthermore,
Satchi Ponnambalam suspected that the killing of Seneviratne was then announced over the radio repeatedly to show that Tamils has killed a Sinhalese.
25 May In the morning, a truck and car were fired at near Eravur, the latter incident killing an off-duty Sinhalese police officer and two other Sinhalese. Sinhalese gangs attacked Tamil labourers in
Polonnaruwa farms at night. The Tamil labourers in the Polonnaruwa sugar-cane plantation fled when they saw the enemy approaching and hid in the sugar-cane bushes. The Sinhalese mobs however set the sugar cane alight and flushed out the Tamils. As they came out screaming, men, women and children were cut down with home-made swords, grass-cutting knives and
katties (a type of cutter), or pulped under heavy clubs. Those who fled were clubbed down or hit by machetes. In
Hingurakgoda, rioters ripped open the belly of an eight-month-pregnant woman, and left her to bleed to death. though Manor claims that this is an exaggeration. Violence against Tamils also took place in areas like Kurunegala, Dambulla, Galewela, and Panadura. At 10 a.m. that morning, following the spread of news of the murders of Police Sergeant Appuhamy and D. A. Seneviratne, Sinhalese gangs began beating Tamils in
Colombo and several of its suburbs. Shops were burned and looted. At this stage, the violence was largely limited to assault, looting, and arson. That evening, Prime Minister Bandaranaike made an appeal to the nation calling for peace. However, he implied that Tamils had initiated the riots by only mentioning the killings in the Batticaloa District, particularly D. A. Seneviratne's murder, as a cause of communal violence.
Countrywide violence Violence against Tamils Bandaranaike's appeal ended up triggering far more severe anti-Tamil violence. What had been limited to mostly limited to arson, looting, and assault now included murder and rape. Subsequent investigations showed there was no female teacher from Panadura stationed in
Batticaloa. Gangs roamed Colombo, looking for people who might be Tamil. The usual way to distinguish Tamils from Sinhalese was to look for men who wore shirts outside of their pants, or men with pierced ears, both common customs among Tamils. People who could not read a Sinhala newspaper (which included some Sinhalese who were educated in English) were beaten or killed. One trick used by the gangs was to disguise themselves as policemen. They would tell Tamils to flee to the police station for their safety. Once the Tamils had left, the empty houses were looted and burned. Across the country, arson, rape, pillage and murder spread. Though the state police eventually helped to quell the riots, they were accused of being initially inactive and even fanning the riots in several places. Some Sinhalese did try to protect their Tamil neighbours, often risking their own lives to shelter them in their homes. Sinhalese laborers of the Land Development and Irrigation Department from Padaviya formed a mob armed with firearms, hand bombs, knives, and other weapons. They also had trucks to transport them. Though they planned on going to Anuradhapura, they took an indirect route on the Padaviya—Kebitigollewa—Vavuniya Road to outmaneuver the army, attacking whatever Tamils they could find on the way. The army and police intercepted the rioters south of Kebitigollewa. They killed 11 rioters, and arrested 343. Some of the prisoners later confessed that they would have gone further south to
Matale and
Kandy had they not been stopped.
Violence against Sinhalese After the
Polonnaruwa incidents of 23 and 24 May, Tamil rioters in
Eravur retaliated against isolated Sinhalese homes and trades people. In Eravur, fishermen from the two communities fought on the seashore. Tamil gangs set up roadblocks, beating up motorists believed to be Sinhalese. A Sinhalese man and his wife were set on fire and their belongings were looted. The violence intensified after news of the murders of the Panadura priest and Tamil fiscal clerk in Kalutara circulated. In various parts of the Batticaloa District, Sinhalese were mercilessly killed by Tamil rioters. In
Valaichchenai,
Muslims sheltered Sinhalese who fled from Tamil mobs. 56 cases of arson and attacks were registered in the
Batticaloa District, and 11 murders were recorded, but it is believed that the actual number of Sinhalese killed in
Karativu alone is far larger than the official statistic. Many Sinhalese had managed to flee by water and land on the southern coast, but others had fled into the jungle, where they had succumbed to hunger and wild animals. The houses and huts of Sinhalese that had already fled were looted and then burned.
Jaffna turned violent on May 28 with the arrival of the news of the murder of the Panadura priest. No deaths were reported, but some Sinhalese merchants had their inventories burned. Tamil mobs would order Sinhalese out of their properties, loot valuables, and then burn the properties. The behavior of the mobs led politicians in Colombo to suspect that the violence was organized. A mob attacked the
Buddhist Naga Vihare temple, which was rebuilt afterwards. The mob tried to kill a Buddhist monk there, but he was saved by the police. Two days later, a mob from Kayts moved onto the Nagadipa Vihare temple at
Nainativu and destroyed it. ==Government response==