Justice crawls; highway cop quits

Editorial-July 2, 2014

Police Constable Suminda Saman, who came under a goon attack recently, has tendered his resignation. He claims he was assaulted and his car burnt because he had booked Deputy Minister Hemal Gunasekera’s driver on the Southern Expressway for speeding and had a nasty brush with the politician as a result. He has told a television channel he has no faith in the on-going police investigations and he fears for his safety. Police Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana has said the investigations will take another week or so.

The knee-jerk reaction of a section of the police bigwigs to the assault on the constable was to create a sneaking suspicion, in the minds of the public with the help of some malleable members of the Fourth Estate, that the victim was not telling the truth. A rumour was floated that he had his car set on fire and made a false complaint so as to migrate to the US to join his sibling resident there. The victim has vehemently denied this allegation.

Attacks on Opposition activists and media personnel who refuse to toe the government line are readily dismissed as being orchestrated by the victims themselves to seek political asylum in the Occident. True, there are some racketeers who use such ruses to migrate to greener pastures, but generalisations have to be avoided. No sooner had a controversial monk complained that he had suffered genital injury at the hands of a group of thugs who, he said, had abducted and assaulted him severely before leaving him on a road recently than he was arrested. The police claimed his injuries were self-inflicted and he had tried to fan the flames of ethnic violence in Aluthgama. They had the monk vilified, tried and even ‘found guilty’ by a section of the media. What are courts there for? Whether the monk has told the truth or made a false claim is a matter for the learned judges to decide; the matter is now before courts. Will the police who swing into action against those suspected of instigating racial hatred explain why they have not so far arrested rabble-rousers responsible for the Aluthgama violence which destroyed several lives and properties worth billions of rupees?

The tardiness of the police in conducting investigations is suggestive of an attempt at a cover-up for political reasons. The guardians of the law are known for their remarkable turn of speed which becomes manifest only when they are prodded by powers that be into speeding up probes. One may, therefore, argue that had there been no political involvement in the attack on the traffic cop, the police would have traced the culprits in next to no time.

It was only the other day that a judge censured the police for releasing a politician wanted for assaulting a constable on duty and forcibly removing a tractor with illegally mined sand taken into police custody. He asked how an ordinary citizen could expect the police to ensure his or her protection when they let down their own kind in that deplorable manner.

The Police Department is Sri Lanka’s Augean stables, the cleaning of which requires a Herculean effort, but it is not short of good, efficient men, women and officers and the onus is on the police bigwigs to create an environment for them to carry out their duties and functions without groveling before politicians.

The only way the police could allay serious doubts in the minds of the public as regards the investigations into the attack on PC Saman is to reveal, without further delay, what really happened and take legal action based on their findings. The policeman’s resignation is a damning indictment of the police top brass.