From Sara to Ishara

Wednesday 12th March, 2025

It looks as if the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) did political work full-time and investigated crime part-time. A regime change means more political work for the CID, which has to make numerous arrests and conduct many politically motivated probes, which enable the culprits to play the victim card and regain public sympathy. The CID bigwigs never own up to their mistakes and failures and blame them on others. However, a woman working for a crime syndicate has outwitted them and left them at a loss for excuses.

When the CID’s serious lapses that allowed the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) terrorists to carry out the Easter Sunday attacks (2019) with ease came to light, the police top brass trotted out various excuses including the one that some state intelligence agencies had misled them. However, they continued to grope in the dark even in the aftermath of the carnage, which shook the world. If they had got their act together at least after the terror attacks, the most wanted suspect could have been arrested. Sarah Pulasthini Rajendra alias Sarah Jesmine is her name; she is the widow of Muhammadu Hastun, who carried out a suicide bomb blast at St. Sebestian’s Church, Katuwapitiya, destroying many lives. She has gone missing.

It was claimed initially that Sarah had died in a suicide bomb attack during a search operation in Sainthamaruthu on 26 April, 2019. DNA tests conducted on the remains of those who perished in the blast revealed that Sarah had not died, and the police subsequently said she had fled to India. If she had been arrested, it would have been possible to identify the mastermind behind the Easter Sunday terror attacks because she was privy to the NTJ’s secret plans.

The current Secretary to the Public Security Ministry was in charge of the CID as an SDIG when the Easter Sunday terror attacks were carried out, and the Director of the CID at that time is now the Director of the Central Criminal Intelligence Analysis Bureau. The NPP, which they and many other ex-police officers campaigned hard for, last year, is in power, and the new government has total control over the military intelligence and other spy agencies, we are told. So, one would have thought that tracing Ishara Sewwandi, the woman who aided and abetted the recent killing of Ganemulle Sanjeewa, an underworld kingpin, inside a courtroom, in Colombo, would be child’s play for the CID. But she is still at large, and the top cops have been left red-faced. What is the world coming to when a woman with underworld links succeeds in outfoxing the entire Police Department and all state intelligence outfits?

Perhaps, nothing could be more humiliating to a police force than its failure to find its own boss. IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon has been evading arrest much to the embarrassment of the police and the government. How can those who have failed to trace the country’s police chief be expected to track down terror suspects and other criminals?

Much publicity has been given to a report that the Institute for Economics and Peace has, in its annual Global Terrorism Index (GTI) 2025, classified Sri Lanka as the country least affected by terrorism in the world. GTI is described as a comprehensive study that analyses the impact of terrorism on 163 countries, covering 99.7 percent of the world’s population. This is certainly welcome news, which must have gladdened the hearts of all Sri Lankans in these difficult times. However, one wonders whether the underworld has moved in to fill the vacuum created by the defeat of terrorism.

Luckily, the LTTE was neutralised 16 years ago. Otherwise, we would have had to depend on a bunch of incompetent cops and spooks who cannot so much as arrest the Police Chief or the female accomplice of an underworld Sicario in custody to protect the country against Prabhakaran and his killing machine.