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Little or no followup action on scathing report on incident
Masterminds of attack still at large
A year after gunmen ambushed two prison buses in Kalutara and massacred seven persons, authorities have been slow to implement recommendations made by an expert committee appointed to probe the incident. While several suspects were arrested, the alleged masterminds still remain at large.
Five prison inmates and two prison guards died in the attack on February 27, last year during the ambush at Ethanamadala in Kalutara while prison inmates were being transported to the Kaduwela Magistrate’s Court. A notorious underworld figure Aruna Udayanga Pathirana alias Samayang and four of his associates were targeted and killed in the attack, along with the two prison officers. Police Spokesman Superintendent of Police (SP) Ruwan Gunasekara said 15 suspects have so far been arrested in connection with the investigation conducted by the Colombo Crime Division (CCD). “Seven of the suspects are directly linked to the attack. They are still in remand custody. Five others who were arrested for aiding and abetting are currently out on bail. Three others have been released without charge after it was established that they had no involvement.”
SP Gunasekara added investigations were continuing to arrest several others identified as being directly linked to the ambush. While he declined to mention names, it has been widely reported that police believe underworld kingpins ‘Angoda Lokka’ and ‘Makandure Madush.’ masterminded the attack.
In May, 2017, a three-member committee appointed by Prison Reforms Minister D.M. Swaminathan to probe the incident was scathing in its criticism regarding widespread corruption within prisons and the inability of the Prisons Department to root it out.
Officers from the Kalutara prison as well as the police both believed that details regarding the movement of Pathirana and his associates were leaked to the assailants from inside the prison. The committee report recommended that a probe be conducted to determine if this was so. It also called for action to be taken against any officers for any administrative or operational lapses that may have contributed to the attack. A year on, there is no record of a single officer being disciplined over the incident.
The report stated firm action should be taken to stop prisoners using mobile phones within prisons and recommended the instalation of jammer systems to eradicate the menace. Prisons Spokesman Thushara Upuldeniya said a jammer system which was earlier tried out as a pilot project in the Welikada Prison failed due to several technical issues including interference to mobile phone coverage outside the prison premises. In light of this, a committee has been appointed to study alternate solutions.
It was found during the inquiry that prisons officers had been hopelessly unprepared and outgunned. Bullet proof and blast proof buses were among the items needed to counter such attacks, the committee noted. There was an immediate need for 50 backups, 30 special security vehicles and 50 250hp (horse power) motorbikes.
In the aftermath of the February 27 ambush, the Prisons Department initiated a programme to build such armored bullet proof buses to transport high profile prison inmates and suspects. Just one bus has been turned out as of this month. Two more are currently being constructed with the assistance of the Sri Lanka Navy.
Mr Upuldeniya said a request for backup vehicles has been made to the Ministry of Prison Reforms, but acknowledged no vehicles had been delivered thus far.
The Prisons Spokesman however, insisted that some progress had been made. “We have reviewed our training methods for officers and have made changes. We are also carrying out a far more thorough threat assessment of prisoners and our surveillance methods are better,” he claimed. He said fingerprint machines have been introduced for all prison officers to ensure that an electronic record is kept regarding their attendance and the times they come and go from prisons.
The committee had further recommended extensive use of CCTV. The new, so-called ‘super prison’ opened at Angunukolapelessa in October, last year, has a wide CCTV network. The Prisons Department plans to call tenders in the coming weeks for a similar CCTV network to be installed at the Magazine Prison.
A shortage of personnel had made it difficult for the Prisons Department to establish a special elite unit within its ranks to guard high risk inmates and to strengthen the department’s intelligence services as recommended by the committee, Mr Upuldeniya further stated. A batch of 350 Prison Officers are currently undergoing training at the department’s training school at Angunukolapelessa. They are due to pass out next month. “We hope to handpick 40 of them as an initial group and train them into such a unit,” he emphasised.
| Controversy over compensation Families of the two prison officers who were killed in the incident are yet to receive any compensation, despite Cabinet approving a proposal submitted by Prison Reforms Minister S. Swaminathan to grant each of them Rs. 2 million, given that they died in the line of duty.Both the Ministry of Prison Reforms and the Department of Prisons admitted that compensation for families of Jailor S.R. Wijeratne and Prison Guard S. Tharmikan was yet to be awarded. Prisons Department Spokesman Thushara Upuldeniya said he expected compensation to be awarded shortly. A Ministry official, said the compensation had been delayed by bureaucratic red tape. While the proposal to award Rs.2 million each for the deceased officers was approved by Cabinet, it turned out this amount exceeded the compensation designated for a government officer killed on duty, as per official circulars from the Ministry of Public Administration and Ministry of Finance. However, an argument had been made that such an amount had earlier been awarded to the family of an officer from the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) who had also been killed in the line of duty. The official blamed the Department of Prisons for failure to award compensation due to the families. “The Minister has expressed his regret at this failure on the part of the department. They should have got this done much earlier considering this is a humanitarian issue,” he further stressed. | |