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Crackdown on deserters to include rehabilitation programmes too, says MoD
View(s):- Deserters and serving police officers and armed forces personnel involved in recent crime wave
By Sandun Jayawardana and Damith Wickramasekara
Deserters from the armed forces who are arrested under an island-wide operation that will continue “indefinitely” will be subjected to rehabilitation, according to the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
The rehabilitation will also include special programmes for those addicted to drugs, counselling programmes and programmes aimed at providing professional skills to help the deserters to integrate back into society, MoD’s Director—Media and Spokesperson Colonel Nalin Herath told the Sunday Times yesterday.
Regular police and military police are involved in operations to arrest deserters. Colonel Herath further said, adding that existing law with regard to any weapons recovered from arrested deserters would be followed.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake summoned senior officers of the army for a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the situation
Details regarding how many deserters had been arrested have not been revealed since the Defence Ministry Secretary Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Sampath Thuyacontha issued a directive earlier this week. The order came fast on the heels of several deserters from the armed forces being arrested in connection with organised criminal gang activity and fatal shootings.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake also summoned senior officers of the army for a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the situation. The meeting focused on measures taken regarding the security situation of the country, the President’s Media Division (PMD) said in a statement.
The MoD has also not released figures on the number of armed forces deserters estimated to be at large. It is not just deserters who have been arrested in connection with the recent crime wave. Several serving police officers and armed forces personnel have also been arrested.
The most prominent shooting incident in recent days was the murder of alleged organised criminal and drug trafficker Sanjeewa Kumara Samararatne, alias “Ganemulla Sanjeewa,” at the Aluthkade No. 05 Magistrate’s Court on February 19. The alleged shooter, currently under arrest, was identified as Samindu Dilshan (27), alias “Commando Samindu,” a former Army Commando. Two police constables attached to the Negombo and Athurugiriya police stations are also among the 10 suspects under arrest for aiding and abetting the crime.
A former army soldier was also identified as the gunman who shot and killed a 38-year-old man inside a mobile phone shop in Kotahena on February 21. The suspect and the motorbike rider who drove him to the location were arrested. Subsequently, the suspects died at the hands of the police when they allegedly tried to grab the weapons of police officers when they were being taken to uncover hidden weapons, police said.
In other prominent incidents, a police constable is among those arrested over fatally shooting a man and his two children in Middeniya, while a former soldier was arrested over the fatal shooting of a person in Mount Lavinia in January. A serving army soldier was arrested over the shooting outside the Mannar Magistrate’s Court, which killed two persons and injured two.
Meanwhile, a police constable attached to the Mount Lavinia Police went missing on February 8 with a T-56 assault rifle and a T-56 magazine with 30 live bullets taken from the police station’s armoury. It later transpired that the constable had boarded a flight to Dubai. The assault rifle, together with the magazine with the live bullets, which he is suspected to have taken to sell to an organised criminal group, was later recovered by police. A policeman from the same station was arrested on charges of aiding and abetting the missing officer.
The threat posed by organised criminal gangs and the involvement of serving and former police and armed forces personnel were also debated at length in Parliament on Friday when the expenditure heads of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs were taken up during the Committee Stage debate of Budget 2025. Public Security Deputy Minister Sunil Watagala told Parliament that there had been 44 shooting incidents from September 21, 2024, to February 26, 2025. These shootings resulted in 23 deaths. There were 12 incidents where people were fatally hacked to death as well as eight other murders. The deputy minister added that 14 T-56 assault rifles, 21 pistols, 78 12-bore shotguns, 17 revolvers, 840 muzzle-loading guns, and 24 other firearms were recovered during this period. Accordingly, 994 firearms were seized during the period.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake also addressed Parliament during the course of Friday’s debate. He claimed the government analysed six incidents that happened in the recent past. These were the shooting in Middeniya, the Aluthkade Magistrate’s Court shooting, the Kotahena shooting, the shooting of a person in Uswetakeiyyawa, the theft of a weapon from the Mount Lavinia Police, and a shooting in Minuwangoda that occurred on Wednesday.
“We believe that with the exception of the Minuwangoda shooting, the five other incidents were the work of five different gangs. What does that tell us? These criminal armed groups have been activated at the same time.” President Dissanayake said. He claimed there is justifiable suspicion that there is an organised conspiracy for all these groups to be activated at once and that they were being directed by an unseen hand. He pledged that the government will take on and defeat all such organised criminal gangs.
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