Untitled Document

Front Page

Five star brawling affects hotel trade
By Tania Fernando
A recent brawl at a nightclub of a five-star hotel in Colombo is causing concern among City hotel managements, as they feel incidents of this nature would affect the industry.

While the hotel management in question claims no brawl took place, eyewitnesses and Police confirm that the incident between two businessmen took place on September 6.

According to Police sources, the incident occurred between 3.30 a.m. and 4 a.m. on that day at the popular nightclub of the hotel between two leading businessmen, who are frequent visitors to the club.

He said that while one businessman had entered the nightclub with his entourage of eleven bodyguards, another businessman was at the nightclub with seven guests. While guests of one businessman were talking with the other businessman, another guest had entered and commenced a conversation with the businessman with bodyguards. After a few minutes an argument had commenced and one of the guests had tried to assault the businessman. However, the hotel management had intervened and requested that the argument be stopped.

A bodyguard of the businessman who had tried to intervene on behalf of his boss had dropped his pistol, when he was pushed. The argument had ceased after a while with no fight taking place, the police source said.

At the time of the incident, there were members of the West Indies cricket team along with two members of the Sri Lanka cricket team at the hotel. Although the Fort Police carried out investigations and statements of hotel staff were recorded, they say that no such incident occurred that night.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe who is presently in New York, on hearing about the incident had requested acting IGP T. Anandarajah to conduct an investigation into the incident.

The acting IGP had appointed Colombo Central SSP D P L Dissanayake and ASP Cyril Fernando to conduct investigations into this incident. When contacted by The Sunday Times, Mr. Dissanayake declined to comment and said that investigations are being carried out.

A police source said that there had been three incidents at this hotel this month but only one incident had been reported to the police, where a windowpane costing around Rs. 87,000 had been broken in the reception area of the hotel.

The other two incidents went unreported, the source said. Police sources said that the management is reluctant to make complaints with regard to incidents of this nature, as those who are responsible are frequent visitors to the club and heavy spenders. Therefore, action is not taken and brawls continue to occur, sometimes even putting the life of other guests in danger, the sources said.

After the occurrence of a serious brawl on December 31 last year, where a son of a minister was involved in a shooting incident at a hotel in Colombo, and subsequent incidents of similar nature, the Prime Minister had requested his Cabinet ministers to ensure that incidents do not occur causing embarrassment to the government.

Interior Minister John Amaratunga held a discussion with hotel managements and requested that body checks be carried out on guests entering nightclubs, to ensure that no weapons were carried inside, and even volunteered the services of police personnel for this to be carried out. However, the hotel managements had rejected the proposal, claiming that this move would affect their business.

Meanwhile, a manager of a Colombo hotel said that with the government trying to introduce a night bazaar and night life to Colombo City, the continued occurrence of brawls in nightclubs, will result in the project being unsuccessful.

" This would create a bad impression and could be detrimental to the light up the city concept", General Manager of Holiday Inn Imtiyaz Cader said. He said the government must take action to ensure that such incidents do not occur affecting the industry.

Back to Front Page