Tragic Loss: How Sri Lankan woman Was Killed In Kano

Family of the deceased woman

The late Mrs. Viny Gnanaharan, a Sri Lankan mother, never knew how she was going to die and never guessed it would be so cruel. Twelve years ago, she came to Kano State in North West Nigeria and found a home here. It was said that she loved Kano so passionately that she would do anything for the state. But as fate would have it, she was shot in Kano and by March 22, she was dead. Viny, as she was fondly called, was one of the many less fortunate persons who were shot by the angry bullets of members of the Boko Haram sect on that fateful day.
The victim was with her driver and her son, Elvin, who sat in the back of the car. They were all driving home that evening along Dantata Road, coming from Independence Road, when the bullet found her head and sank into her brain.
Recounting her fate, the deceased's husband, Mr. Edwin told Daily Sun: "She was on her way, coming back home. She was sitting in the front with her driver and my son was sitting in the back. As they were coming, the people were shooting sporadically and one of the bullets fell on her, but the driver was not injured."

"It was the driver who took her to the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, where I went and met her. At the Aminu Kano Hospital, they gave her all the necessary treatment for some time, before we flew her out to South Africa," he added. But Mrs. Viny, who worked with Alliance Travels and Tours in the state, did not die thereafter. She held on, albeit unconsciously. For several days, she remained in a coma, battling between life and death in the land of the unknown just as her relatives prayed breathlessly for her to make it.

In between these times, the battle to save her life took her from the Intensive Care Unit of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano to Mid Park Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa and back again to Kano, with several doctors, including a medical professor, battling to save her life. But she was not lucky. The deceased's husband captured the trying moments, saying that they held onto a thread of hope even when the hospital in South Africa felt that the matter was near hopeless. He told Daily Sun: "At the hospital in South Africa, they said that since it was a head injury and it was severe, they could not do anything. But we kept on for some time, having nothing but hope."

Two weeks after the burial of Mrs. Viny, her husband, Edwin Gnanaharan is still living in shock.