Tuesday 25th February, 2025

The JVP-led NPP government, to give credit where credit is due, has already set two examples worthy of emulation. It had Speaker Asoka Ranwala step down when he failed to prove his claim that he had a doctorate. It has also had the courage to take exception to some degrading remarks Deputy Minister Nalin Hewage made about SJB MP Rohini Wijerathna last week.

Chief Government Whip Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa promptly requested the Chair to expunge the offensive words from the Hansard when the SJB raised objections. NPP MP Kaushalya Ariayaratne condemned, in a Facebook post, what Hewage had said. Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya has also gone on record as stating that such remarks should not have been made. Way to go!

Hewage should have known better than to make such remarks, and there is no way he can justify them. Now that the government has expressed disapproval of his disparaging remarks, the matter should be considered closed. But the Opposition has a propensity to blow issues out of proportion to gain political mileage. Let its holier-than-thou members who lack control over their restless tongues and tend to lash out at female MPs at the drop of a hat be urged to follow the example set by the NPP. They ought to remember that nastier things have been said about female MPs in Parliament, which has also witnessed numerous brawls and even a savage attempt to assault and gherao the Speaker. The culprits got off scot-free. Thankfully, most of those rowdies are not in the current Parliament.

The UNP and the SLFP as well as their offshoots, the SJB and the SLPP, respectively, are without any moral right to condemn others for mistreating women. The UNP’s 17-year rule (1977-1994) began with a presidential pardon for a notorious rapist serving a jail. UNP politicians and their supporters also stripped female SLFP activists naked in public during the post-election violence spree in 1977. The SLFP, which produced the world’s first female Prime Minister, humiliated a group of female UNP activists in a similar manner in the run-up to the North-Western Provincial Council election in 1999.

Most of the Opposition MPs who have taken up the cudgels for Rohini’s rights—and rightly so—were in the previous Parliament, but they never so much as made a whimper of protest when MP Diana Gamage was vilified in the House. After crossing over to the government from the SJB, Diana had to suffer many indignities at the hands of some male SJB MPs who would spew out streams of suggestive remarks whenever she rose to speak in the House. She sought to get even with them, but hers was a futile effort like a badger’s fight against a pack of mastiffs.

We urge the party leaders to take up the issue of harassment of female MPs and rein in unruly elements in their parliamentary groups. This is the best way to clean up Parliament.

Meanwhile, the female members of the Provincial Councils and local government institutions were in a far worse predicament than the women MPs. Reams were written about the harassment of female local councillors, some of whom were even shouted down at council meetings. The situation became so bad that the victims sank their political differences and formed a front to fight for their rights.

Successive governments have striven to increase women’s representation in political institutions and made laws to achieve that end, but without much success. A quota has been introduced for women in the LG institutions. There is a pressing need for decisive action to safeguard their rights. This is something the NPP government should give serious thought to, with the next LG polls only a few weeks away. It ought to extend its Clean Sri Lankan initiative to keep the local councils to be elected in April free from harassment, sexual or otherwise. Other political parties which are making a public display of their commitment to protecting women’s rights, too, should assign high priority to the task of ensuring that LG institutions will have zero tolerance of the harassment and intimidation of female councillors.

Monday 24th February, 2025

Sri Lanka’s focus has been shifted from Budget 2025 and the economy to the netherworld of crime and narcotics for all intents and purposes. Since President Anura Kumara Dissanayake presented the NPP government’s maiden budget on 17 Feb., a spree of underworld attacks has sparked a kind of national discourse on crime and criminals.

Close on the heels of Wednesday’s courtroom killing, which shook the country, two suspects arrested for gunning down a person in Kotahena, Colombo, were fatally shot allegedly in a scuffle with the police during ‘a search for weapons’ at Crow Island. A policeman also suffered injury in the clash, we are told. Those killings have provided grist to the Opposition’s mill, and left the NPP government on a sticky wicket.

Friday’s custodial deaths are viewed in some quarters as a sign of the culture of extrajudicial executions returning. This is something a government needs like a hole in the head, especially ahead of an important election. So, it is only natural that the NPP administration had the Acting IGP and the Secretaries to the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Public Security give a press conference as a damage control measure, on Saturday. Theirs was an attempt to mitigate the political impact of the surge in crime, the courtroom murder and the custodial deaths on the government.

Secretary to the Ministry of Public Security, former SDIG Ravi Seneviratne, addressing the media, went so far as to attribute the increase in criminal activity to a conspiracy. Giving what may be considered a political twist to the issue, he claimed that there was an attempt to derail investigations into the past emblematic crimes including the Easter Sunday carnage and destabilise the country. He said he had received intelligence reports to that effect; those behind that sinister move had been identified and legal action would be taken against them. Going by his claim, there is a threat to national security. But President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who is also the Minister of Defence, has categorically stated, in Kandy, that there is no threat to national security. Hasn’t the President taken Seneviratne’s claim seriously, or doesn’t think a move to destabilise the country serious enough to be considered a threat to national security?

Interestingly, in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday tragedy (2019), the then President Maithripala Sirisena claimed that the terror attacks had been intended to scuttle his war on the underworld, especially the drug Mafia. Now, Seneviratne, who was the SDIG in charge of the CID at the time, tells us that the ongoing underworld attacks are aimed at derailing the Easter Sunday carnage probe among other things!

As for conspiracies, we are reminded of what ex-SDIG Seneviratne stated in his testimony before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI) that probed the Easter Sunday terror attacks. He and 10 other witnesses insisted that there had been an external hand behind the Easter Sunday carnage. Among others were Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and former SSP Shanie Abeysekera.

The police are duty-bound to ensure the safety of all suspects in custody. Friday’s custodial deaths have left another blackmark on the police. A thorough investigation is called for. The police narrative about the killing of the aforesaid crime suspects reminds us of actor/director-turned NPP MP Jagath Manuwarne’s popular teledrama, ‘Kodi Gaha Yata’, wherein a suspect is killed and a policeman suffers injury to a leg under similar circumstances.

The prevailing culture of custodial deaths has rendered everyone vulnerable. First, they come for criminals, and whom they will come for next is anybody’s guess. More importantly, the Sri Lanka police have earned notoriety for wrongful arrests, which are legion. The way they acted following the murder of Seya Sewwandi, a four-year-old girl, in Kotadeniyawa, in 2015, is a case in point. Three suspects including a schoolboy were taken into custody on suspicion and vilified before the real murderer was arrested. Thankfully, the police did not take any of those suspects out as part of ‘an operation to trace illegal firearms’!

Worryingly, the focus of the ongoing public discussion is on the criminals and their rights rather than the victims of crime. Much is being spoken about the serious security lapses that led to the killing of Ganemulle Sanjeewa in the dock, but his victims numbering dozens, and the predicament of their families crying out for justice have not received much attention. The deaths of two suspects in a police shooting are being discussed in Parliament and on political platforms, but the person who perished at their hands in Kotahena has been forgotten.

A lot of wisdom dawns after the fact; and this is what we have seen in the James Bond-style drama that unfolded in Hultsdorf on Wednesday when a high-profile prisoner, Ganemulla Sanjeewa described as an underworld kingpin, was shot dead in the dock by a gunman disguised as a lawyer. A woman accomplice, also pretending to be a lawyer, had smuggled in the revolver used for the shooting. This, ironically, was hidden in a copy of the Criminal Procedure Code hollowed out in the shape of the firearm used.

The victim, categorized as a high-profile prisoner, was brought to court from the Boossa Prison under armed Special Task Force (STF) escort. As he was considered a possible target given his previous criminal record, special arrangements had been made to produce him in court where he faced three cases. But all that proved to be of no avail as he was shot dead at point blank range.

Thanks to the STF which within hours arrested the suspected gunman at Pallavi near Puttalam, the law enforcers have been able to wipe some egg off their faces. But not all of it. The suspect’s woman accomplice has not been arrested at the time of writing although an island wide dragnet had been thrown to arrest her. A police constable who had telephone contact with her is under arrest. While this may not be directly connected to the crime, it speaks volumes of the company some policemen keep.

Undoubtedly there was some very smart police work, aided by CCTV footage from the crime scene, that led to the arrest on the very day the crime was committed. The clothing worn by the killer which he had ditched has been recovered, the vehicle he rode and its driver taken to custody and much more. Hopefully, photographs of the woman now widely distributed would help her early apprehension.

It is not known whether the main suspect now in custody was headed for the coast in an attempt to leave the country by fishing boat. Many criminals guilty of heinous offenses here, both during and after the civil war have escaped to India.

Some of them are now being brought back both from India as well as Dubai where a number of Lankan mobsters are holed out. Television visuals of some of these criminals/suspects with white cloth thrown over their heads being escorted out of the Bandaranaike International Airport is common fare in evening television news.

Some such criminals are reported to be directing underworld activities by telephone, sometimes with participation of jailbirds here. Thankfully, Interpol red notices and other devices used to combat global crime are helping law enforcement in many countries including Sri Lanka.

A lot of crime detection work is now possible by analyzing mobile telephone records. Journalist Keith Noyahr in 2008 was able to escape alive after being tortured by state agents thanks to the location of his whereabouts by telephone signals and a series of telephone calls by VVIPs in the dead of night. Noyahr subsequently fled the country and has refused to return to help prosecute his abductors.

Who can forget Kumaran Pathmanathan, best known by his initials as KP, reputed to be the LTTE’s chief arms procurer and designated as Prabhakaran’s successor who was arrested in Malaysia in August 2009 weeks after the war had ended and brought back to Sri Lanka during Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s time as defence secretary. Although a great ho ha was made about the arrest, he was never prosecuted and continues to live in the north where he has set up an NGO doing charity work enjoying security from successive governments.

Wednesday’s shooting at the Fort Magistrate’s Court in Hultsdorf is not the first of its kind. In January 2004, another underworld figure, Dhammika Amarasinghe, was similarly shot dead by a man disguised as a law student. The assailant was immediately overpowered, arrested and prosecuted. Apart from that, there have been dozens of killings of suspects as well as key witnesses, either on their way to or leaving court.

Then there was also the killing of High Court Judge Sarath Ambepitiya and his police bodyguard in November 2004. Ambepitiya was well known as a ‘no nonsense’ judge imposing stiff sentences on persons convicted in his court. These included a 200 year sentence on LTTE leader, Veupillai Prabhakaran, tried in absentia and jail terms for military personnel for murdering Tamil youth at the Bindunuwewa Rehabilitation Center. He also sentenced two Air Force officers to nine years jail for threatening a senior journalist. Fortunately, his killers were apprehended and successfully prosecuted.

For far too long, gangsters and hardcore criminals have had an unholy nexus with politicians who provided them with cover to thrive. Corruption within the criminal justice system has also encouraged organized crime. Names like Gonawela Sunil, pardoned for an offense of rape and the notorious Soththi Upali rewarded for his services with Gam Udawa contracts will be familiar to most readers.

Breaking this cycle requires urgent reforms, starting with the depoliticization of the police and the Attorney General’s Department. Ensuring these institutions function independently, free from political interference, will help restore public confidence in the justice system and curb the impunity enjoyed by organized crime networks.