The Arrest Of Former DIG Anura Sennanayake & The Problem Of Command Responsibility
By Basil Fernando –May 27, 2016
Basil Fernando
Former DIG Anura Senanayake was arrested and produced before the Colombo Magistrates Court, and the Court ordered him to be remanded till 26 May 2016. According to reports, the allegations against him relate to the murder of rugby player Wasim Thajudeen. It is particularly alleged that he attempted to misdirect the inquiry into this case, at the initial stages, trying to pass off the murder as an accident. The Officer in Charge (OIC) of crimes at the Narahenpita Police Station, now also under arrest, has confessed that the former DIG instructed and directed investigations to be carried out on the basis that it involved an accident despite the observed evidence making it obvious to the OIC that there were sufficient grounds to suspect murder. The purpose of this article is not to go into the case details as such but to focus on such high ranking police officers being suspected of serious crimes on the policing service in Sri Lanka.
There are a number of criminal cases in which senior police officers of such rank as Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIGs), down to the Assistant Superintendents of Police (ASPs) and Officers in Charge (OICs), have been charged in courts; some have already been found guilty and sentenced on serious charges, such as murder. Some others are being investigated on charges of murder and related offences and of deliberate subversion of the judicial process by tampering with investigation processes and reports. Some recent cases relating to such senior officers are: the case of former DIG Vaas Gunawardana, who with six others was convicted and sentenced to death on charges of abducting and murdering a businessman; the case of ASP Cooray, who was found guilty and convicted for the murder of senior Minister Jeyeraj Fernandopulle; the case of Thajudeen’s murder itself, wherein, apart from former DIG Anura Senanayake, Traffic DIG Amarasiri Senaratne and former Director General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) Major General Kapila Hendawitharane have been questioned by the CID, and two Head Quarters Inspector of Police (HQIs) on duty in Narahenpita and Kirulapone have also been arrested along with Sumith Champika Perera, former Crime OIC of Narahenpita police; and the infamous murder case of Sumith Prasanna Jayawardena, wherein the Embilipitiya ASP W.D.C. Dharmaratne has been arrested and remanded. There have been others who have been charged for bribery and corruption. 
A policing system is a monolithic system, which runs on the basis of control from the top to the bottom. It is a strict system of command and the control, and the actions of the officers of the lower ranks are entirely in the hands of the officers of higher ranks. The system works on the basis of command responsibility, which is a doctrine of accountability of superior officers regarding all other who act under their direction and command. This system can function only to the extent that the principle of command responsibility is respected and maintained within the organisation.
