For over seven years, Navaseelan Navaratnam has been carefully guarding a devastating truth from his 80-year-old Sri Lankan mother: no one knows where his brother, Skandaraj, is.“She is a heart patient,” said Navaratnam. “I don’t want to hurt her.”Skandaraj Navaratnam, 40, was last seen in the early hours of Sept. 10, 2010, leaving Zipperz, a now closed bar near Church and Carlton Sts., with an unknown man. The case of his disappearance would become part of Project Houston — an eighteen-month long police task force looking for Skandaraj and two other men who went missing between 2010 and 2012: Majeed Kayhan, 58, and Abdulbasir Faizi, 42.On Monday, Toronto Police announced three additional counts of first-degree murder have been laid against suspected serial killer Bruce McArthur. One of those counts was in relation to Kayhan’s death. Skandaraj’s friends and family, have yet to hear any new information. Speaking to the Star from Dubai, Navaratnam, 42, tells a story of three brothers—two in Sri Lanka (aged 52 and 44) and himself—who continue to “hope and pray that nothing has happened” to their brother. Skandaraj was the second oldest of the four brothers. This year marks his 47th birthday. Navaratnam said that Skandaraj moved to Canada from Sri Lanka a few years before he went missing. The family is Tamil—a minority community in Sri Lanka that faces many ethnic and political tensions. Skandaraj chose to leave, said Navaratnam. “He never came back.” “We were worried, always asking him to come back,” he said. “We told him how we haven’t seen you for such a long time. But we knew he was okay.” The brothers would talk on the phone when they could. Navaratnam says that Facebook was the most constant form of communication. Once a month, or once every two months, they would chat. Sometime in 2007 or 2008, Skandaraj told his younger brother that he was ...
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