ECONOMYNEXT – The daughter of slain Sri Lanka editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, has referred to as for the impeachment of Sri Lanka’s Legal professional Basic following the shock launch of suspects in her father’s demise and a senior police officer arrested for destroying proof.
AG Parinda Ranasingeh (Jr) ordered the discharge of three suspects, the place proof together with a pocket book the place numbers of the bikes pushed by the assassins had been recorded.
Cupboard spokesman Minister Nalinda Jayatissa mentioned Wednesday, the federal government was reviewing the matter.
“The information of what transpired final week clarify that this choice was no accident,” Ahimsa Wickrematunga, mentioned in a letter to Prime Minister Harini .
“It was no harmless mistake.”
The most recent motion was confirmed tradition of “nonchalance, callousness, complacency and utter disregard for his or her responsibility to victims of crime and the witnesses who danger their lives to guard the integrity of our justice system,” she mentioned.
“If Mr. Ranasinghe was not conscious of the above information when he made his choice, he’s responsible of gross neglect of responsibility.
“If Mr. Ranasinghe was conscious of the above information when he made his choice, he’s responsible of gross abuse of his workplace.
“In both occasion, he’s now not match to function Legal professional Basic. My household is lucky that my father’s profession and fame resulted on this matter receiving large publicity and publish outcry.
Thought grateful for President Anura Dissanayake for his makes an attempt to get the Legal professional Basic to behave it was not his jobs, she mentioned.
“Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be the job of the top of state to brandish a fireplace extinguisher and chase behind an Legal professional Basic who’s operating round with a field of matches,” Ahimsa Wickrematunga wrote.
“The Legal professional Basic is accountable to Parliament. The one solution to fulfill the federal government’s pledge to restore the justice system is to question him earlier than Parliament and search his removing from workplace.”
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The total letter is reproduced under:
Hon. Harini Amarasuriya, M.P.,
Prime Minister of the Republic of Sri Lanka,
Temple Bushes,
Colombo 03,
Sri Lanka
Expensive Madam Prime Minister,
Name for impeachment of the Legal professional Basic for gross abuse of energy / gross neglect of responsibility in reference to the felony proceedings on the assassination of Lasantha Wickrematunge
I write with grave concern concerning the motion taken final week by the Legal professional Basic, Mr. Parinda Ranasinghe, to discharge three people who had been named as suspects in Mount Lavinia Magistrates Court docket Case Quantity B 92/2009, the inquiry into the assassination of my father, Lasantha Wickrematunge. I’m additionally grateful to your authorities for its swift announcement that it’s going to evaluate the choice regardless of the political dangers stemming from the NPP’s pledge to foster a felony justice system unbiased of political interference. Nevertheless, I concern that the federal government believes that making use of stress on Mr. Ranasinghe to reverse his choice will probably be a adequate resolution.
The information of what transpired final week clarify that this choice was no accident. It was no harmless mistake. It’s the results of the tradition that Mr. Ranasinghe has fostered and allowed to flourish in a number of elements of the Legal professional Basic’s Division – a tradition of nonchalance, callousness, complacency and utter disregard for his or her responsibility to victims of crime and the witnesses who danger their lives to guard the integrity of our justice system.
My father was ambushed and assassinated on January 8, 2009, as he drove to work. The assault occurred in broad daylight contained in the excessive safety zone surrounding the Ratmalana Air Drive Base. His assailants fled in direction of the bottom and had been by no means recognized. Neither the assassination nor its blatant coverup had been ever critically or credibly investigated till the case was transferred to the Felony Investigation Division (CID) following the displacement of the Rajapaksa regime in 2015.
In the course of the subsequent investigations from 2015 to 2019, the CID painstakingly investigated a whole bunch of leads and amassed a mountain of proof totaling over 50 volumes of investigative materials. To my information, no single investigation within the historical past of the CID has ever been so meticulous. The CID understood that the one hope of uncovering the reality behind my father’s
assassination after so a few years was to unravel the threads of how and why the crime was coated up.
In doing so, the CID adopted up on the allegation that my father’s driver had been kidnapped and threatened. In doing so, they revealed a sketch of the suspect and revealed it with the permission of the Mount Lavinia Justice of the Peace. They then investigated potential suspects resulting in the arrest of Premananda Udalagama, who was recognized in a parade.
The CID additionally investigated why there was no file of my father’s subject pocket book within the crime scene proof. On the day my father was killed, his pocket book had been extensively recorded within the media, on the entrance seat of his automotive, smeared in his blood, with two motorbike numbers written on its cowl.
These investigations led the CID to find that the preliminary inquiry officer, Tissa Sugathapala of the Mount Lavinia Police, had certainly found my father’s pocket book, separated and documented it in his department’s proof register.
He had taken be aware of the motorbike numbers, assessed that they had been written by my father, and he started investigating these numbers, having made the suitable entries in police information and informing his superiors.
Nevertheless, after police management realized that Inspector Sugathapala had discovered a result in establish my father’s assailants, he was summoned to the workplace of the Deputy Inspector Basic of Police (DIG) for the Colombo South Vary, Prasanna Nanayakkara.
Inspector Sugathapala was ordered to convey with him the sector pocket book and all police information that talked about it. This was an especially irregular request, as such information are nearly by no means meant to be faraway from a police station.
Due to this fact, Inspector Sugathapala took steps to make and conceal photocopies of my father’s pocket book in addition to all of the related pages of the police investigation books (IBs) and manufacturing registers on his solution to the DIG’s workplace. Whereas on the DIG’s workplace, Inspector Sugathapala alleges that DIG Nanayakkara ordered him to tear out the pages of the IBs and manufacturing registers on which the pocket book was talked about, and to give up the pages to him together with the pocket book.
The DIG allegedly advised the Inspector to physician the unique information to masks any information of the pocket book’s existence, and warned him that if he continued investigating the homicide, my father’s destiny would await him too.
This account was corroborated by Inspector Sugathapala’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Hemantha Adikari, who was an eyewitness to the occasions. A number of then officers of the Mount Lavinia Police have additionally corroborated Inspector Sugathapala’s discovery of the pocket book, and swiftly making copies after being summoned with the registers and proof to the DIG’s workplace.
DIG Nanayakkara then again has denied on the file that my father’s subject pocket book was produced into proof.
Moreover, the CID found that DIG Nanayakkara had additionally been in shut contact with the Judicial Medical Officer, Okay. Sunil Kumara, who initially fabricated a collection of false medical stories claiming my father had shot himself. When questioned by the CID, not like many of the different officers, Mr. Nanayakkara claimed to don’t have any recollection of any of those occasions.
A evaluate of those information alone, all of which have been reported in open courtroom and extensively reported within the media, can’t lead any proper minded particular person to conclude, as Mr. Ranasinghe did, that there was “no materials” to assist an allegation of destruction of proof by both DIG Nanayakkara or Inspector Sugathapala.
Any lawyer who had ever forwarded an indictment or gained a conviction in a excessive courtroom trial would respect the mountain of proof in opposition to DIG Nanayakkara, and the worth of Inspector Sugathapala as a prosecution witness in opposition to those that sought to forestall an investigation into my father’s assassination.
If there was a niche within the proof, any competent prosecutor would have directed the CID to conduct additional investigations, to not throw out one of the crucial vital investigative avenues on this case outright. I perceive, nevertheless, that in Mr. Ranasinghe’s profession, he has by no means gained a single prosecution of a single accused for any offence.
To know the gravity of Mr. Ranasinghe’s neglect of responsibility and abuse of prosecutorial discretion, additionally it is vital to contemplate the circumstances beneath which the Legal professional Basic’s Division opened a file into my father’s assassination, CR1/40/2020.
Following the victory of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) in November 2019, the brand new authorities moved swiftly to dismantle and scuttle all ongoing felony investigations into complicated or emblematic crimes, and to punish these law enforcement officials who dared to analyze these crimes in addition to witnesses who had dared to return ahead.
As part of this effort, the brand new CID management cherry-picked a smattering of proof and forwarded a request to the Legal professional Basic’s Division in 2020 to discharge all suspects and to wind down investigations.
The fabric forwarded didn’t spotlight many of the information which might be outlined above.
The then Legal professional Basic, Dappula De Livera, was conscious of what the federal government was attempting to do and instructed his officers, at nice danger to themselves, to say no the CID request and to withhold a proper response, thereby stopping the CID from taking additional motion in reference to the case till investigations may at some point resume.
I turned conscious of those information by means of correspondence I started with the Nationwide Police Fee (NPC) on June 17, 2020, to protest the appointment of one other suspect in my father’s case because the Director of the CID.
The NPC confirmed to me on January 11, 2021, that the then CID Director, SSP Prasanna Alwis, was certainly suspected of sabotaging my father’s investigations.
They nevertheless took no motion to take away him or defend the integrity of the investigations. I wrote again on March 9, 2021, copying the Legal professional Basic, referencing his file quantity, CR1/40/2020, highlighting the dangers to the integrity of the investigations.
But it’s these doctored and cherry-picked extracts from 5 years in the past that Mr. Ranasinghe relied upon to succeed in his choice to drop the instances in opposition to Premananda Udalagama and DIG Nanayakkara.
It is a easy matter.
If Mr. Ranasinghe was not conscious of the above information when he made his choice, he’s responsible of gross neglect of responsibility.
If Mr. Ranasinghe was conscious of the above information when he made his choice, he’s responsible of gross abuse of his workplace.
In both occasion, he’s now not match to function Legal professional Basic. My household is lucky that my father’s profession and fame resulted on this matter receiving large publicity and publish outcry.
But when the Legal professional Basic may act so callously in such a high-profile matter, I can’t think about the anguish suffered by peculiar individuals who depend on Mr. Ranasinghe to guide the general public’s efforts to convey criminals to account.
I couldn’t be extra grateful to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake for his ceaseless makes an attempt to carry the Legal professional Basic to account.
Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be the job of the top of state to brandish a fireplace extinguisher and chase behind an Legal professional Basic who’s operating round with a field of matches.
The Legal professional Basic is accountable to Parliament. The one solution to fulfill the federal government’s pledge to restore the justice system is to question him earlier than Parliament and search his removing from workplace.
Yours Sincerely,
Ahimsa Wickrematung
