Who Is Former STF DIG K. L. M. Sarathchandra?

By S. V. Kirubaharan –November 28, 2016

S. V. Kirubaharan

The POLICE stand for politeness, obedience, a listening ear, investigations, consultations, trust and maybe other meanings too. Are all these respected in today’s policing? In Sri Lanka, one cannot say that the whole of policing is in jeopardy – there are good and bad eggs. The problem in Sri Lanka is that politicians as well as the wealthiest trouble-makers manipulate the police. History has proved that this doesn’t work in the long run. ‘The mills of GOD grind slow but sure’. Presently two DIGs and some other high-ranking Police officers are remanded in custody and another DIG has been sentenced to death.

On 23 November, I was not surprised to read of the arrest of K.L.M. Sarathchandra who was the former co-ordinating secretary of the Security Division of the former President and former Special Task Force (STF) Commander for misusing a state vehicle. The Sri Lankan press has failed to give any details of his ‘misuse of a state vehicle’, where and for what?

Those who don’t know the history of Tamil militancy may not know who Sarathchandra is. There are many reasons for the birth of Tamil militancy, but one should not forget that it intensified due to mis- handling by then governments as well as by the police.

Now-a-days, the majority of the people and some politicians in the South, as well as the security forces blame Pirapaharan without analyzing the root causes that gave birth to and intensified militancy.

I knew this Sarathchandra in the late 70s as the Officer-in-Charge (OIC) of Annaikoddai Police station in Jaffna. Then he was a sub-inspector of Police. He was a tyrant not only in his designated policing area, but in the whole of Jaffna. To be frank, people in Jaffna then knew more about him, than about Pirapaharan – I am not exaggerating.

Here I will quote only a few incidents to show how he took the law into his own hands and his tyranny encouraged Tamil youths to become militants.

One evening, in his policing area, four school-going students were chatting on the door-steps of the library, as they leaving after studying there. This gentleman came in civil clothes with another two policemen in a car borrowed from a rich man and started to beat up all those students for no reason. I saw this incident. He beat them mercilessly until his baton broke into pieces. It is to be noted that after a few years two of those students died at a young age. These were natural deaths but his beating may have contributed to their death, for example by causing undiagnosed internal injuries.

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