Macavity IGP and the complicit state

by Tisaranee Gunasekara

“Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place – MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!”

TS Elliot (Macavity: The Mystery Cat)

In Sri Lanka, the borderline between fact and fiction, hard reality and wild fantasy is often porous. So in 2020, the authorities announced that a cat was caught smuggling drugs into the Welikada Prison. Photographs were released of police inspecting the offending feline and the incriminating evidence. “The feline delinquent was detained last week with two grams of heroin, two memory cards, and a memory chip hidden in a plastic bag tied to its collar,” explained The Daily Beast. But within days, the cat did a jail-break, never to be seen again. The cat escaped, revealed VICE, when the guards entered the cell with food. It was Macavity brought to life, the feline master-criminal created by TS Elliot in the poem Macavity: The Mystery Cat and popularised by Andrew Lloyd Weber in the musical, Cats.

From the mystery of the drug-smuggling cat to the mystery of the vanished IGP. On 28 February, the Matara Magistrate Court issued a warrant for the arrest of (temporarily suspended) IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon over the December 2023 shooting incident at WI5 Hotel in Weligama. When CID officials went to his private residence on the same day, they found him gone. Like Elliot’s Macavity, who was “the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair,” the IGP has been eluding the police ever since.

In July 2024, the Supreme Court issued an interim order preventing Deshabandu Tennakoon from functioning as the IGP due to the allegedly irregular nature of his appointment. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake appointed an acting IGP in September of that year, but Mr. Tennakoon remains the country’s top-cop until he resigns or is removed. Perhaps this nebulous state has addled official minds – for even on 28 February 2024 (more than seven months into his temporary suspension), Mr. Tennakoon retained his state-provided and public-funded 10-member security detail, four from the STF and six from the MSD.

So, not just a fugitive IGP but also a colluding system. Who permitted Mr. Tennakoon to keep such a large security detail, especially at a time when all VIP security is being stringently re-evaluated? Were the political authorities aware of this fact? The NPP/JVP in opposition would have screamed to high heaven about this abuse (and rightly so), but is silent about it in government.

Deshabandu Tennakoon “ran a criminal network, allegedly exploiting police officers under his command for unlawful activities…” (and) turned police officers into a ‘paramilitary force’, the AG’s Department has informed the Appeal Court. This, after all, is the meat of the charge against him, that he used officers from the Colombo Crime Division to attack a hotel owned by a personal enemy. Providing such an individual with a 10-member security team (four of them from the STF) would be foolhardy at best. It also turns the saga of the missing IGP from one individual’s depredations into systemic failure.

The banality of torture?

“The torturers sleep soundly their dreams are rosy,” wrote Zbigniew Herbert (From an Unwritten Theory of Dreams). They do, until they face the possibility of being tortured.

It is safe to assume that for almost 15 years, Deshabandu Tennakoon did not spare a thought for Ranjith Sumangala and his two companions-in-misfortune. Yet, their fate, unlawfully detained and brutally tortured, might be haunting the fugitive IGP’s dreams, waking and sleeping.

This week, Mr. Tennakoon, via his lawyer, filed an application asking the Appeal Court to stay the Matara magistrate’s arrest warrant. Questioned by justices, the lawyer expressed his client’s willingness to surrender to the police if an undertaking is given not to arrest him. The AG’s Department refused to give such a guarantee. The search continues.

The non-functional IGP’s unwillingness to be arrested is understandable given what he himself did to Ranjith Sumangala and two others in December 2010.

The three men were arrested on suspicion of being involved in a series of thefts in the Moragahahena-Padduka area and detained in the Mirihana police. The arrests were made subsequent to an anonymous letter (signed ‘aggrieved villagers/neighbours’) received by the then SSP Deshabandu Tennakoon. The detainees were subjected to beatings and torture (including water torture) and were not produced before a magistrate during the legally stipulated time period. SSP Tennakoon personally visited the place of detention; he ordered the suspects to be stripped, thrashed them with a ‘three-wheeler belt’, and forced them to apply Siddhalepa balm on their own genitalia.

In March 2011, Ranjith Sumangala filed a fundamental rights case in the Supreme Court, naming Deshabandu Tennakoon as the fifth respondent. The judgement finally came in December 2023; the court held with the petitioner and rejecting ‘in toto’ the responses of the respondents. In its ruling, the Supreme Court called the actions of Deshabandu Tennakoon and other respondents a “stark betrayal of the Rule of Law…entirely repugnant to the virtues of a democratic republic.”

It is an open secret that beating and torturing suspects are common police practices in Sri Lanka. Use of excessive force and torture are particularly rampant when the detainees belong to minority communities. A recent case in point was the experiences of poet Ahnaf Jazeem; arrested by the TID on the charge of promoting extremism and terrorism, he was kept handcuffed for two weeks and tied to a chair during nights.

The Supreme Court, in its ruling, focused on this systemic angle. “Violations of the kind we have observed in this case are, unfortunately, all too common. These are by no means isolated one-off events but are symptoms of long-standing institutional failures…” The case reveals “a pattern of grave derelictions which has persisted for a considerable period of time” (https://supremecourt.lk/?melsta_doc_download=1&doc_id=44cb0b15-2cbf-48f1-9ff3-7d6b9c4e7caa&filename=sc_107_2011.pdf).

Perhaps the court hoped that its ruling would be a turning point in ending practices which are as deplorable as they are ineffective in combating crime. The court also would have taken into account the fact that the fifth respondent Deshabandu Tennakoon was the acting IGP, just one step away from permanency. Maybe the court hoped that with this judgement it could prevent a proven torturer from becoming the country’s top cop. So the court not only ordered the state and the respondents to pay compensation to the petitioner but also asked the National Police Commission and other authorities to take appropriate action against the respondents, including acting IGP Tennakoon. “The big fish in the pond are seldom held duly accountable,” the judgement said.

But the court’s attempt to hold a very big fish accountable for his past crimes didn’t succeed. The Police Commission (which, incidentally, is super active currently) remained somnolent. Within days of the judgement, convicted torturer Deshabandu Tennakoon was appointed Inspector General of Police by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, one of the most egregious deeds of a presidency replete with political wrongs and economic rights.

Mr. Tennakoon’s true strength was that he had friends on every side of the political divide. That he was favoured by the Rajapaksas and a protégé of the then minister of public security Tiran Alles were open secrets. He seemed to have had well-wishers even among the political opposition and civil society representatives on the Constitutional Council.

In a revealing incident, in October 2023, the CC unanimously decided not to approve another extension to the then IGP Chandana Wickremeratne, knowing well that they might be opening the door to Deshabandu Tennakoon’s elevation. Bringing Mr. Wickremeratne back from retirement and giving him repeated extensions was the way President Wickremesinghe subverted Mr. Alles’ attempts to make his protégé the next IGP. (https://economynext.com/move-to-oust-sri-lanka-police-chief-backfires-135910). That time, President Wickremesinghe scrapped the CC’s move. But less than two months later, he allowed Mr. Wickremeratne to retire and appointed Deshabandu Tennakoon as the IGP. This eventual capitulation is even more egregious because it happened after the Supreme Court found Mr. Tennakoon guilty of illegally detaining and torturing a suspect. It’s as if the Scotland Yard and the Flying Squad made Macavity the Police Commissioner!

Mr. Tennakoon had powerful patrons not just among politicians of all stripes but also monks. When the Supreme Court imposed a temporary suspension on him, a group of monks organised a procession in support of the IGP Tennakoon (and then minister Tiran Alles). “When Buddhist leaders are appointed they should be supported,” one monk said. The action was led by senior monk Agalakada Sirisumana thero (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nlQD3lLc0k). He and another senior monk, Bellanwila Dhammarathana thero, were amongst three-monk petitioners who in September 2024 asked the Supreme Court to vacate its interim order and allow Deshabandu Tennakoon to resume functions as the IGP. The fact that the man had been found guilty of torture did not matter to these supposed adherents of a teaching based on non-violence.

A trail of Iniquities

The disaster of the Macavity IGP was a disaster foretold. The political leaders who promoted/enabled Mr. Tennakoon would have known his unsuitability to wear the police uniform, let alone to become the senior-most guardian of the law. For he had left a trail of iniquities behind him. Study them, and a veritable pattern is discernible of an official willing to bend/break the law for his own benefit and/or to satisfy his patrons.

In June 2009, journalist Poddala Jayantha was white-vanned in broad daylight near Embuldeniya junction, a hop and a skip away from the Mirihana police station. He was tortured and then dumped by the roadside near the IDH hospital (https://www.dailymirror.lk/dbs-jeyaraj-column/Journalist-Activist-Poddala-Jayantha-s-White-Van-Ordeal/192-128823). The Mirihana police arrested and remanded two unrelated persons. The investigations didn’t proceed beyond this, naturally. Deshabandu Tennakoon was then the SSP in charge of Nugegoda area. In 2019, the CID took a statement from him about the blotched investigation (Lankadeepa – 20.1.2019). Once Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president, the investigation into the blotched investigation and the abduction was abandoned.

In July 2021, investigative journalist Tharindu Jayawardane complained that Mr. Tennakoon threatened him, stating that he will meet the same fate as Vellupillai Prabhakaran and criminals. The police recorded a statement from him more than a year later. The matter ended there.

In January 2023, SSP DS Wickremesinghe, Director of the Special Investigation Unit, informed the Fort Magistrate Court that Deshabandu Tennakoon threatened him for reporting to the court the facts relating to the July 9^th discovery of 17.8million rupees by Aragalaya activists in the President’s House. Mr. Tennakoon wanted him to hand over the money not to the court but to Minister of Public Security Tiran Alles, SSP Wickremesinghe said. When he refused, Mr. Tennakoon reportedly called the SSP and threatened him saying, “I will take care of you in the future” (https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking_news/SIU-Director-informs-Court-he-was-threatened-by-Deshabandu-Tennakoon/108-252145).

He was as good as his word. In July 2023, SSP Wickremesinghe was transferred to the Research and Development Division of the police (https://srilankabrief.org/the-director-of-siu-sri-lanka-police-who-complained-against-sdig-deshabandu-transferred).

Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission noted that 24 custodial deaths happened in the Western Province involving the police between January 2020 and August 2023. Deshabandu Tennakoon was the senior DIG in charge of the Western Province during this period.

Now the man himself is on the run, fearing the police he had contributed in no small measure to subvert and corrupt.

In its December 2023 judgment, the Supreme Court stated, “The kind of conduct on display, judged even by the lowest standards, amounts to a magnificent failure of all that the Rule of Law stands for.” That sentence itself should have sufficed to suspend Deshabandu Tennakoon from his position as senior DIG. Instead, the Police Commission looked on while politicians protected and promoted him.

Unfortunately, this unsavoury past is not even the past. Last week, the Supreme Court expressed “strong displeasure” about the non-implementation of its orders regarding five police officers including Senior DIG Ranmal Kodituwakku. The five men are respondents in another fundamental rights case. The petitioner, Mishara Ranasinghe, has alleged that the senior DIG and other officials assaulted him after he overtook a vehicle. Even the petitioner’s bed ticket from the Mulleriyawa base hospital is missing, the lawyer for the petitioner informed the court.

Clearly, neither the state nor the government has learnt anything from the ongoing debacle of our Macavity IGP. The SC order remains unimplemented seven months after it was given. The rot in the system obviously runs too deep. Deshabandu Tennakoon represents not the past we escaped but the present we live in and the future waiting for us.