This disturbing question was raised last week after a court passed death sentences on five soldiers and a reserve police constable, convicting them of the rape and murder of a teenager, Krishanthy Kumaraswami, and the murders of her mother, brother and another relative who were inquiring about her.

After the sentence was passed, one of the soldiers alleged that there was a mass grave in Jaffna of Tamil civilians.

Responding to the judge's query whether any of the accused wished to make a statement before being led away, he said soldiers, carrying out an order from a top military official, had buried 400 bodies, mostly of young persons at Chemmanai and that he was prepared to identify the site. The bodies of Krishanthy and her family were recovered from Chemmanai, six km south-east of Jaffna.

The convicted soldier's statement sentshockwaves in Sri Lanka, especially in the Tamil community. Senior member of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and Parliamentarian Joseph Pararajasingham has demanded an investigation. He has also asked the government to extend the scope of a recently appointed commission to include disappearances after 1995.

There has been no official reaction from the government so far. A senior minister said the convicted soldier's statement could have been made out of spite. Army commander Lieutenant-General Rohan Daluwatte said it is upto the police to investigate the statement.

Jaffna Commander Major General Lionel Balagalle said that it was for the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to investigate the case. Chairman of NHRC O S M Seneviratne was unavailable for comment.

However, for the families of those who disappeared during that period, the news of the alleged mass grave can only underline afresh their sense of loss.

"We refuse to accept that our children are dead. If they are dead, where aretheir bodies?" Padmanathan Selvarajah, president of the Guardian Association for the Disappeared asked recently. It is officially accepted that over 700 people "disappeared" in the Jaffna peninsula after the army took control of the region from the LTTE in December 1995.

Most of the disappearances took place between July-November 1996, soon after an LTTE suicide bomber tried to kill a senior minister on a visit to the peninsula. A brigadier and several others died in the attack, unleashing a backlash from the army which had till then behaved with unprecedented restraint in a region.

Since then, a Board of Investigation into Disappearances has managed to trace only 181 of the 730 Tamils.