Champika to be blamed for The Leader journalist’s shooting

Saturday, 16 February 2013

Sources from the Police Headquarters say that there is an attempt to involve Minister Champika Ranawaka in the shooting of The Sunday Leader journalist Faraz Shaukatally.

The IGP has commenced investigations as usual according to a Presidential directive into the shooting incident that had taken place around 12.10 a.m. on the 16th at the guest house belonging to Shaukatally.

The President has informed the head of the investigative team to investigate and report to him whether businessmen affiliated to Minister Champika Ranawaka are connected to the shooting.

Shaukatally holds dual citizenships in Sri Lanka and Britain and is an investigative journalist. He had written exposes on irregularities that have taken place in government tenders. He is closely connected to high level members of the government and had written the irregularities in large scale tenders on a directive by the new owner of The Sunday Leader, Asanga Seneviratne.

The journalist had exposed many irregularities in the awarding of tenders for coal for the coal power plant and the relevant files had been given to him by Asanga Seneviratne. Although two businessmen affiliated to the President, Ravi Wijeratne and Jehan Ameratunge have tried to secure the tenders to import coal, they had lost it. Following a request made to the President, he had directed the Power and Energy Ministry Secretary M.M.C. Ferdinando to recall the tender and hand it over to Ravi Wijeratne and Jehan Ameratunge.

JHU Secretary Champika Ranawaka was the Power and Energy Minister at the time and he had ordered that the tenders be allocated without giving into any political pressure.

It is then that a repot was published to state that the coal imported through the tender were of poor quality.

Government sources say that Ranawaka had lost his Power and Energy portfolio because he is opposed to the move to hand over the Norochcholai coal power plant to the Chinese and refusal to give the coal importing tender to the President’s favorites.

In an interview with a weekly newspaper after he lost the portfolio, Ranawaka has said that a certain group in the government had paid a bribe of Rs. 5 million to journalist of a weekly newspaper to publish reports against him and that details about the journalist would be released shortly.

However, the police team investigating the shooting incident is also doubtful whether Shaukatally was shot due to a dispute over a land deal.