Ragunathan’s Disappearance
Rajan Hoole
Political Murders, the Commissions and the Unfinished Task – 7
Our account is based on reports, which appeared in the Sinhalese weekly Yukthiya during May 1993. Further clarifications were obtained by interview. Ragunathan was staying in an apartment in Sumitrarama Road, a crowded narrow street off Gunananda Road, Kotahena. People were often out washing and bathing, so that a newcomer soon becomes well known. It also had its illicit liquor den. It was an area closely supervised by UNP godfathers. The control of the Party and supervision of the area were very much the prerogative of Minister Sirisena Cooray, Premadasa’s lieutenant and UNP general secretary. We know the traditions followed by the Kotahena police in the Ananda Sunil case. With Premadasa elevated to president, Kotahena police station became very special.
In view of this it is remarkable that it took the Police more than ten days to locate where Ragunathan resided after his picture was splashed on television. The Police after a long delay “swooped” on the area and arrested Athula the owner of the apartment, but produced neither Athula nor any of the half a dozen persons who identified Ragunathan at the magistrate’s inquest. Other remarkable things happened.
Ragunathan’s body
A journalist at the Tamil daily Veerakesari received a telephone call from the couple who had ‘decamped’ from the apartment rented from Athula. This was about three days after the assassination. They identified themselves as Ragunathan’s sister and her husband. The journalist who knew the couple put them onto a senior journalist. The couple told the senior journalist that the dead youth whose face was shown in the media was the wife’s younger brother. A particular circumstance, which they told him, was that this youth, Ragunathan, had been detained by the Kotahena Police several months earlier. The journalist cannot now recall whether it was six months or a year. The reason was evidently that he did not have a valid identity card, but carried a photograph signed by his village headman (GS) in Jaffna. The couple then had heard that Ragunathan was at Kotahena police station from someone who had gone there to give food to another detainee and happened to see him. On going to the police station – this was after he was missing for about three days – the couple was told by the Police that they did not have Ragunathan. Read More
