A committee comprising three retired judges is to be appointed, by the President, to look into the recent troubling incidents that took place in Kandy, a communiqué issued yesterday by the President’s Media Unit read.
The committee is expected to investigate reasons for the recent unrest including the breakdown of law and order, damage to lives and property, any conspiracies behind the unrest.
It will also look in to other factors such as the action taken by authorities to suppress the incident and the steps to be taken to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The recent incidents left havoc in its wake with large scale property damage while the Police have arrested 106 suspects for inciting violence. Meanwhile IGP, Pujith Jayasundara will send a special team to Kandy to identify any failures and weaknesses on the part of the Police during the recent unrest, Police Media Spokesman SP Ruwan Gunasekara said.
The Spokesman responding to allegations of Police inaction and failure said the Police will look into these issues once the situation is stable. However, SP Gunasekara said they had not received any official complaints of Police inaction during the unrest in Kandy.
Allegations of inefficiency and mismanagement of the situation have been mounting against the Police. “We always just take these undeserved accusations and continue in our duties” SP Gunasekara said pointing out how the Police took immediate action on March 4, at the beginning of the violence itself when two shops in Teldeniya were torched. According to him the Police arrested 10 people involved in this act immediately.
Addressing these allegations Commander of the Sri Lanka Army Lieutenant General Mahesh Senanayake said, on discussion many had directly pointed the finger at the Police and the Special Task Force (STF) for not being able to contain the violence. “By the time the Army arrived the situation had already escalated,” he said, adding that accusations such as acts of violence were committed while the Police watched on appeared to be commonplace. “It is unfortunate if such things had occurred,” he said.