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Gajan alleges cover-up of father's killing
TNA MP Gajan Ponnambalam alleged in parliament that the Crime Detective Bureau (CDB) tried to cover up the investigation regarding his father's assassination and make the LTTE the scapegoat.

Mr. Ponnambalam Jr., speaking during the debate on the no-confidence motion against Minister John Amaratunga, said eminent lawyer Daya Perera on July 16, 2000 had written to the Attorney General, clearly setting out the cover-up of the killing of Kumar Ponnambalam.

The lawyer had asked that CDB chief Bandula Wickremasinghe be removed from the probe and an impartial police officer be put in charge of it.

Mr. Ponnambalam told parliament: "The matters I have mentioned in the course of my speech and the matters raised by the other members of the TNA stand as strong indictments against three individuals of the previous government, namely the former Minister of Defence, the former Deputy Minister of Defence and the former Minister of Rehabilitation and Reconstruction.

"I wish to say a few words with respect to the way in which the investigations were carried out. The officer in charge of the investigations was the then SSP and Head of the CDB, Bandula Wickremasinghe. His and the CDB's conduct during the investigation had one purpose and one purpose only and that was to exonerate the previous government of any complicity in the killing.

"After the killing of Mr. Ponnambalam, SSP Wickremasinghe spoke to me and rest of my family and in the course of our conversation asked us whom we suspected. Assuming him to be impartial, a wholly erroneous impression, I admit we told him that in our view since Mr. Ponnambalam was responsible for repeatedly embarrassing the then government by exposing the many human rights violations it committed and also being an ardent and unrepentant critic of the government political and military actions against the Tamil nation, we suspected that the killing was ordered by a very high personage of the then government.

"SSP Wickremasinghe who had not even started to investigate the case, promptly scoffed at the suggestion and said that he would prove that no one in the government was responsible. It is in this backdrop that the investigation was carried out".

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