Yesterday saw four Police Constables attached to the Wadduwa Police Station arrested for allegedly assaulting a person who had been apprehended, released on police bail, and later died after vomiting blood at home. The four suspects will be produced before the Panadura Magistrate’s Court today (13).
It is learned that the Police Department had interdicted the four following a lengthy questioning about the incident. The post-mortem of the deceased is to be held today as well. The family of the victim alleged that the four officers were responsible for the death. The death triggered a wave of public protest in front of several police stations in the vicinity where the victim was arrested and caused several tense situations. The deceased is a 24-year-old father-of-one and a resident of the Thalpitiya area in Wadduwa. While investigations are still underway and the cause of death is yet to be established, the incident casts the well-known shadow of custodial deaths, a somewhat frequent occurrence in Sri Lanka.
Custodial deaths, forced confessions, and the Sri Lanka Police, have a long-standing relationship. The practice of ‘beating’ out a confession, is nothing new to most law enforcement forces which were modelled under colonial policing objectives. In many former colonial States, such practices have long been prohibited and waned out with new policies and a change in the culture. Sri Lanka, it seems, has missed the bus on that change. The continued custodial deaths, and that of preventable ‘encounter deaths’, particularly concerning counter-narcotics enforcement and the arrest of those suspected to be ‘hit men’, indicates that the law enforcement agencies prefer to take shortcuts, opting to be the judge, the jury and the executioner – instead of enforcing the law.
Such occurrences are not rare, in 2023, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested three, over their alleged complicity in the custodial death of a female housekeeper, who died while in police custody and is suspected to have been abused during interrogation. The victim was alleged to have robbed a residence of an affluent and influential family, which some believe is the reason that several Police officers have given her a ‘tough treatment’ to force a confession. It is alleged that the Police offered Rs. 10,000 to the husband of the woman to not press charges against the cops involved. The matter is now before the Courts and is ongoing. Another example was the abduction and the suspected custodial murder of 31-year-old Kosma Rasin Lasith Chinthaka and 33-year-old Manjula Asela Kumara on 23 January 2019 by a team of policemen in Rathgama, Galle triggered villages in the vicinity to take matters into their own hands. By blocking the Colombo-Galle coastal road and the railway track, these villagers demanded justice for the two young men, where both were taken for questioning without a warrant, allegedly tortured and killed, and suspected to have been dismembered and torched to destroy evidence. Those Police officers who were charged with the kidnapping and murder of both men are now before the Judiciary. The fact that such judicial proceedings have not acted as a deterrent to other Police officers, as the practice seemingly continues, is very concerning.
Like the Rathgama custodial deaths, many Sri Lankans may have by now forgotten the custodial deaths of Mabulage Dinith Melan Mabula, alias ‘Urujuwa’, and Dharmakeerthi Tharaka Perera Wijesekera, alias ‘Kosgoda Tharaka’, which took place on 11 and 13 May 2021. The Police often claim that the suspects, who are supposed to be handcuffed, attempted to hurl a grenade, or shoot at them with a weapon that was concealed during a field excursion to ‘show where evidence is hidden’. The two were killed while being in the custody of a special police unit, which was led by a DIG, who later was even appointed as the IGP.
Lack of political will and a weak understanding of how law and order, and justice should be practiced, has kept the abhorrent practice alive. The tragedy is that many Sri Lankans believe that a ‘suspect deserves what he or she gets’ and do not comprehend the importance of due process, and of being innocent until proven guilty.