Saturday 8th March, 2025

What is unfolding in Sri Lanka’s law enforcement circles reminds us of Greek mythology, of all things. In Plato’s Symposium, we come across the story about how Zeus split humans in two and condemned them to search for their other halves. The Sri Lanka police find themselves in an even bigger predicament, so to speak; they have had to look for their own head, and their search has so far drawn a blank! Cops and spooks have been working day and night to trace the head of the police, but in vain.

IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon, who is on compulsory leave, has been in hiding since the issuance of a court order for his arrest over a shooting incident, which took place in Weligama in December 2023. The police would have the public believe that they are doing their damnedest to arrest their elusive chief, but without success. There are two possibilities in this regard. The police are so incompetent that they cannot track down their boss, or they are being economical with the truth as they do not want to arrest him.

It is a supreme irony that during Operation Yukthiya, Tennakoon, as the IGP, boasted that he had unsettled the underworld and frightened criminals into taking flight, but today he himself is on the run just like them. There cannot be anything more demeaning for an IGP than to be arrested by his subordinates and hauled up before courts. This may be the reason why Deshabandu is in hiding, but he cannot go on playing hide and seek with the police until the cows come home. He had better turn himself in without further delay.

Tennakoon is in this predicament because he compromised professional integrity and chose to stooge for the political authority of the day. He should have learnt from what had befallen Pujith Jayasundera, who was promoted to the post of IGP at the expense of a more deserving officer during the Yahapalana government. Jayasundera’s promotion turned out to be a curse for him as well as the country. In the aftermath of the Easter Sunday carnage in 2019, he must have regretted that he ever secured the post of IGP. He was arrested and remanded for his failure to prevent the terror attacks. Subsequently, the Supreme Court ordered him to pay Rs. 75 million as compensation to the victims of the bomb attacks.

Jayasundera was an efficient crime buster who did the police proud before being promoted as IGP. He was instrumental in forming the Police Narcotics Bureau and enabling the country to battle the scourge of dangerous drugs effectively. His promotion to the topmost post in the Police Department only ruined his career. Tennakoon, too, would have been free from trouble if he had not become a cat’s paw for the politicians in power to secure the post of IGP.

A sucker is said to be born every minute. The same holds true for stooges, who are also a dime a dozen. This country has never experienced a dearth of them. All vital state institutions, especially the police, are full of them; they have been pulling political chestnuts out of the fire for successive governments. They had better learn from the experience of the top cops who did so in the past and found themselves up a creek without a paddle.