(24 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kurukkal Madam, Sri Lanka – 17 December 2024
1. Various of Jayarasa Abilash, known as "Baby 81", looking at old newspaper clippings telling his story
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Kalumunai, Sri Lanka – 2 February 2005
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2. Various of "Baby 81" sleeping in hospital
3. Mother of "Baby 81", Jenita, picking him up from cot surrounded by hospital staff and media
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kurukkal Madam, Sri Lanka – 17 December 2024
4. SOUNDBITE (Tamil) Jayarasa Abilash, Tsunami survivor known as Baby 81:
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“When my father showed me, it didn’t look a big deal to me. I understood it better after I reached a certain age. Until then I knew it only as a disaster, but I wasn’t aware it was huge.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ARCHIVE: Kalumunai, Sri Lanka – 17 February 2005
++4:3++
5. Baby Jayarasa Abilash ( "Baby 81") with his mother Jenita Jayarasa and father, Murugupillai Jayarasa
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kurukkal Madam, Sri Lanka – 17 December 2024
6. Various of Jayarasa posing with his father
7. SOUNDBITE (Tamil) Murugupillai Jayarasa, Father of tsunami survivor known as Baby 81:
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“His friends in school used to call him Tsunami, he complained to us. In those times I consoled him saying ‘son you are unique in being the only one to have such a name in this world.’ This is what I tell him ‘you are the only one to have the name Tsunami and you are only one to have the name 81’. I have said this constantly and brought him up a man of 20.”
8. Various of tsunami memorial in the front yard of Jayarasa home man
9. SOUNDBITE (Tamil) Jayarasa Abilash, Tsunami survivor known as Baby 81:
“If I have survived after so many had died I believe some big power beyond us is protecting me. I always look at my parents as gods and it is these gods who are protecting me.”
10. Jayarasa and his father covering the memorial with transparent plastic sheet
STORYLINE:
Pulled from the mud as an infant after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and reunited with his parents following an emotional court battle, the boy once known as “Baby 81” is now a 20-year-old man dreaming of higher education.
Jayarasa Abilash’s story symbolized the families torn apart by one of the worst natural calamities in modern history, but it also offers hope.
More than 35,000 people in Sri Lanka were killed in the tsunami, with others missing.
Two-month-old Abilash was washed away in eastern Sri Lanka and found some distance from home by rescuers.
At the hospital, he was No. 81 on the admissions registry, and that’s the name he was known as.
His father, Murugupillai Jayarasa, spent three days searching for his scattered family, with little left to his name in those early hours but a pair of shorts.
First he found his mother, then his wife. But their infant son was missing.
A nurse had taken the baby from the hospital, but returned him after hearing that his family was alive.
The ordeal, however, was far from over. Nine other families had submitted their names to the hospital, claiming “Baby 81” as their own, so the hospital administration refused to hand over the child to Jayarasa and his wife without proof.
The family went to the police. The matter went to court. The judge ordered a DNA test, a process that was still in its early stages in Sri Lanka.
But none of the nine other families claimed the baby legally, and no DNA testing was done on them, Jayarasa said.
Jayarasa said his family gave DNA samples and it was proven the child was theirs.
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