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By
Mudliyar
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Cops
and Kudu Noor: The inside story
Lawyers
always respect police officers of impeccable character. But some
police officers resort to methods that are not in keeping with regulations
- Departmental Orders which they learn at the Police Academy - to
arrest suspects. They probably believe that the commandments of
the Police Academy are only of academic value. If all police officers adhere to these regulations, they would become deadwood, docile and inert and perhaps would win the admiration of those who, like them, do not accept responsibility and try to avoid any confrontation with the authorities. They are harmless and useless. By their inaction, they permit society to suffer and are soon forgotten when they retire as they have not made any contribution worthy of emulation. The Police Department
should consist of courageous officers who are prepared to do what
is right. But often such officers are also subject to the consistent
attack of a section of the Police force. The inefficient inert moles
would conspire within the closed doors to stab them in their back
and send petitions against them and make them subject to all kinds
of disciplinary inquiries. This is what
happened to TID officers such as ASP Priyantha Jayakody, IP Nihal
Fernando, IP Jayalath, CI Samudrajeewa, SI Ranjan, Sharnie Abeysekera
and others. They have marshaled forensic skills in combating crime
with utmost honesty and have suffered at the hands of the few seniors
who have acted like high priests of moral rectitude. IP Fernando,
who was involved in the arrest of Kudu Noor, is now attached to
the Chilaw Police Station. The scenario that led to the arrest of
Mohamed Noor alias Kudu Noor is worthy of being scripted and sold
to a multinational movie company. The question
many ask these days is why there is a rapid proliferation of crime,
vice and drugs associated offences. The civil society has one solitary
scape goat - Police. If the mysteries
behind many allegations against the police are unravelled, one would
come to the irresistible conclusion that they are not far from the
truth. A large majority of the Police force, it is alleged, are
corrupt, inefficient and would bow down to the stately superiors.
Beneath this veneer of the shadowy mask lies the graying seniors
who are about to retire. For them any active young police officer
who is hell-bent on curbing crime, preventing drug trafficking and
fighting the local hooch dealer is unacceptable. ASP Priyantha
Jayakody, IP Nimal Fernando and their subordinates laid an extensive
but a well knit net to scoop in drug smugglers. They knew that the
drug operation is commanded by drug barons of Ward Place, Fife Road,
Maligawatta and other places. The heroin
is smuggled in from India which gets the stuff from the Golden Triangle.
Heroin is smuggled from Tamil Nadu by boat. For some curious reason
the main entry points of heroin to Sri Lanka are on the sea coast
between Colombo and Puttalam. Even the Seventh Fleet won't be able
to cover the large stretch of the Indian ocean. The only way is
to track the fishermen and the fishing boats that bring this contraband
to Sri Lanka. Often the drug
barons use four or five of their trusted lieutenants to go to India
on a small fishing boat and fetch the contraband from South India
or it is transported in an Indian fishing boat and the goods are
transferred in mid-ocean. Police officers
know that the only way available to them is to entice a fisherman
to give information. The deal is that part of the reward money the
police officers get should be given to the informant. But no reasonable
prudent man would believe that an informant would wait for many
months or years until the Police Officers are given rewards by the
Department. We do not have a contingency fund where Police Officers
could secretly pass money to informants. The entire
American administration is protected by a kind of system of bribery
where large packets of dollars are given to informants through agents
of the CIA. Therefore it is inevitable that in order to prevent
a larger crime being committed, that Police permits informants to
share a part of the contraband. The Police would, of course, vehemently
deny this. But if this system would ultimately lead to the eradication
of the drug mafia no one should frown upon such methods. As dawn cracked
on October 22, 2001, TID sleuths arrested Kudu Noor and five members
of his gang. Noor often took with him on his trips a young relative
who was not more than 10 but had the brains and the brawn of an
adult. Noor and the gang were transporting the heroin in a Toyota
Carina car. When the Police gave chase they found that the driver
was a versatile speedster who could have beaten Michael Schumacher
on any Sri Lankan track. The chase began at 4 in the morning at
Chilaw and ended at Wariyapola. If not for the pot holes on the
road Noor and the gang would have escaped. The suspects were arrested
and brought to the Chilaw Police Station. According to Police Reports,
six kilograms of heroin were recovered. The productions were weighed
and sealed in the presence of officers. It has become
a rigid formula of the Police that they must take special care in
putting on to paper the investigation notes. The Police are accustomed
to the various objections a clever lawyer would make at the trial.
If the Police records of the entire episode were to be relied on,
no drug related case would end in a conviction. Despite the
arrest of the suspects and the production of the contraband in courts,
the police are confronted with the task of proving their charges
beyond reasonable doubt. To prove a charge beyond reasonable doubt
is indeed an uphill task. Therefore to bring this arrest within
the jurisdiction of the Chilaw Police area they had to make notes
that the arrest was made not at Wariyapola but in Chilaw. Up to the time
of arrest they did not know that they had netted one of the biggest
sharks in the drug smuggling industry. They were also amused by
the fact that there was a boy who looked like an adult but had not
even passed puberty. He had a faint moustache. They knew that if
they produced this boy in Courts all kinds of defense would be available
to a good lawyer. After consulting the superiors the team decided
to release the boy. That decision was a fatal error on the part
of the Police. The suspects were produced in Court and one Felix
Dayaratne Mahamudali promptly made a statement from the dock accepting
culpability of smuggling six kilogrammes of heroin. The street value
was estimated at Rs. 6 million or more. The TID requested
the judge to hand over the suspect back to the TID to be kept in
detention for seven days which is the maximum period the Police
could keep a suspect concerned in committing an offence. But a team
of lawyers who arrived from Colombo was informed by their clients
that the entire exercise did not take place as submitted by Police
to Court. They requested
the Magistrate in the name of justice to hold an inquiry independent
of the TID and for an inquiry to be conducted by the ASP Chilaw.
This was also the time the police were grappling with election violence.
But the Chilaw ASP submitted to Court that there was sufficient
time granted to him to conduct a proper investigation and submit
a report. Even that statement was challenged by the eminent team
of lawyers who appeared for Noor. They said they
had reliable information that the arrest of Noor took place not
in Chilaw as contended by the Police but at Wariyapola. They had
as a witness a ten-year old boy who was in the vehicle at the time
of the arrest. The Magistrate then instructed his Court Sergeant
to record the statements of all the suspects and the other witnesses
produced by the defense. When the report
was submitted by the Court Sergeant the Magistrate decided to hold
an inquiry and the evidence of the boy who was released by the Police
was recorded. He proved a star witness. His detailed description
of the chase and even the conversation of the Police Officers and
how the heroin was weighed was recorded. At that time as the General
Election was in the offing the investigators could not have the
counsel of the AG's Department. As often happens,
the facts of the raid which is inconsistent with the notes the police
officers made proved the whole episode totally unreliable, and the
Court then discharged all the suspects except the man who confessed. Senior State Counsel Harippriya Jayasundera objected to any statement being recorded by the Magistrate. She contended that the court had no power to do so. But on the day the decision was made the police have failed to contact the Attorney-General's Department. The magistrate having decided that the arrest did not take place in Chilaw discharged Kudu Noor and the others, except the man who originally confessed. Later Kudu Noor and another suspect was murdered but the agony of the Police officers continued. When the TID
took these suspects into custody all of them had cellular phones
which contained the numbers of top officers of another agency. This
matter was reported to TID chief Sirisena Herath. When the inquiry
began, the members of the other agency anticipated that something
radically wrong would follow. The whole system that was in operation
of smuggling heroin to Sri Lanka would collapse. They immediately
took precautions to avert such a disaster. It is alleged that they
arrested the informants, assaulted them mercilessly and forced them
to make confessions that they gave money to the TID officers to
escape their arrest and detention. The alleged attempt of the agency
to implicate the TID officers for having four kilograms of heroin
as reward to the informants could not be substantiated as they could
not find a grain of heroin in their possession. Thereafter,
in an alleged bid to put a stop to the operations of the TID, the
agency recorded statements of these informants under torture. The
statements said the TID Officers, including IP Fernando, were given
a massive bribe by them. Then something very interesting happened.
A top police officer who was at logger-heads with the TID acted
on information and/or on rumour that four kilos of heroin worth
millions of rupees were handed back to the informants as a reward. As a pillar
of high moral rectitude, impartiality and consistency, he informed
the IGP that immediate action be taken and inquiries conducted on
this allegation of four kilos of heroin being re-routed to the market.
The battle behind closed doors of Police Headquarters was a shameful
encounter with one section accusing the other of contravening the
law. The detection of heroin took a nose dive from 100 kilos to
no more than five kilos said to have been detected by the Narcotics
Bureau. The informants
and the others who helped the Police to detect the heroin learnt
a lesson of a lifetime. Though they would get only a few thousand
rupees from the drug barons for smuggling heroin to Sri Lanka, it
was far better to be satisfied with that kind of money than to give
information to the Police or to one specific agency. As soon as
heroin is detected their lives are in danger. They face threats
not only from drug barons but also from the Police themselves. If the Government is seriously interested in curbing the smuggling of heroin it must immediately appoint a committee to investigate the conduct of the two agencies involved in detecting the largest quantities of heroin in one year. That is the Narcotics Bureau and the now disbanded Terrorist Investigations Division. It must be noted
that in Sri Lanka there are fine investigators who are young, capable
and clean. But some saintly
old guards of the Police are determined to prevent such officers
from doing a job of work as, if they are given the power and the
opportunity, they would not only curb crime and bring the underworld
operatives to surface but also expose the rotten old guard within. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
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