Police juniors, without fault, suspended over stale dinner

 Saturday, 23 November 2013 

The Police Department has suspended with immediate effect, on disciplinary grounds, a sergeant and eight PCs of Mathurata Police, who had been in Colombo for the security of CHOGM last week, say department sources.

On the night of November 13, they had been accommodated at Hindu College, Bambalapitiya. The meal packets given them had become stale and leaving those packets in the room they were in, they had gone to sleep on an empty stomach. A group from Nuwara Eliya Police, who had, like them, been accommodated in the third storey of the building, had raised a din, demanding dinner. They had been drunk and one of them had urinated, from the third floor, into the ground.

Hearing the disturbance, the nine men from Mathurata Police had come out to inquire and those who had been shouting, had left.

At 7.00 am on the following morning, SSP Priyantha Weerasuriya had come, packed the group from Mathurata Police into a jeep and taken them out of Hindu College. Without detailing them for any duty that day, they had been kept isolated from each other and statements recorded from each of them. Also, they had been examined by a doctor of the Colombo National Hospital to find out as to whether they had been under the influence of liquor on the previous night. On the same day, they had been sent back to Mathurata Police.

They had been suspended on disciplinary grounds on November 19. According to police sources, the group from Nuwara Eliya Police, the real culprits, had been saved from trouble by minister Arumugam Thondaman, as the SI Ravi Chandran, who had urinated from the third floor, was a bodyguard of his. But, the juniors from Mathurata Police, who had nothing to do with the incident, have been suspended.