CID kick-starts stalled high profile assassination cases

The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) has begun expediting three high profile cases which have been at a standstill for sometime, DIG for CID D.W. Prathapasinghe told The Sunday Times.

The CID has set up three separate teams to speed up the investigations of the assassinations of former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar and TNA MP Nadaraja Raviraj and the attempt on Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s life. The move comes in the wake of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s meeting with senior Police officers at Temple Trees last Saturday in which he said that senior officers should get involved in combating crime and warned them not to pass on that responsibility to junior officers including constables.

The President declared that 3,258 cases had piled up at the CID and they included high profile investigations like the assassination of Mr. Kadirgamar, attempts on the lives of Army Commander Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and the VAT scam. “Don’t pass on your responsibilities to the police constables, the Officer-in-charge (OIC) or the OIC Crimes and wash your hands of them. You have to intervene,” he Police officers.

He told them that the police should carry out their duties within the premise that all suspects were innocent until proven guilty and the onus was on the Police to prove the cases against the suspects. DIG Prathapasinghe said the reason for so many cases to go missing is mainly due to the lack of evidence and the files going missing.

“We need specialized equipment and better training. Despite the drawbacks we have managed to solve a large number of cases. Sometimes the case files go missing. They are sometimes destroyed by parties that have vested interests,” he said.