evidence: In the morning of 25th July he was near Angoda at their press, proof reading their journal. A crowd coming from Colombo advised people to close up and go home. Bopage drove home to Kelaniya, passing through Colombo. In Kelaniya cars were being stopped on the road opposite the Tyre Corporation and vehicles carrying Tamils were being burnt with their occupants. (Sources from Kelaniya University told us that one Omar, a well-known thug of Cyril Mathew's, was responsible for killing a Tamil doctor and burning him along with his vehicle.) The thugs wanted to remove some petrol from his car. Someone recognised him and waved him off. He then got into the road to go to his home in Mawarandiya. A Ceylon Transport Board breakdown truck came towards him with 25 to 30 passengers wielding clubs and long knives. [...] To Jayewardene and Bandaranaike Buddhism was primarily a means to getting votes. To Mathew it was something much more. His zeal for planting or allegedly discovering Buddhist temples in Tamil-speaking areas is well-known. It was as though this zeal was for him a means of fighting for a place in Sinhalese society which tolerated, rather than accepted him. Jayewardene pandered to his vanity by making him MP for the 'hallowed city' of Kelaniya, where Mathew in turn made himself President of the Kelaniya Sacred City Trust.