Excise Department Scam: Victimized Parents In Fear As Children Used For Ransom
Department of Excise sleuths have been involved in targeting teenagers over a period of time, especially those from reputable families and extorting large sums of ransom monies for their release, Colombo Telegraph can reveal today.
Helen Meegasmulla – The new Excise Commissioner General
A group of victims made up of several parents when contacted by Colombo Telegraph confirmed that collectively they are proceeding to file a Fundamental Rights case under the constitution of Sri Lanka against human rights violations.
Helen Meegasmulla was recently appointed to the post of Excise Commissioner General.
In a startling investigative discovery over a two-year period, Colombo Telegraph has credible information to confirm that high-ranking officers from the Department of Excise have been using different methods to lure and arrest and at times torture unsuspecting youth especially for drug-related offenses, in order to extort whopping sums of monies from their families.
These acts which still prevail mainly in Colombo and its surrounding suburbs, run concurrently between various stations due to the original group of operating officers being transferred to different stations. However it all began a few years back, when a group of Excise Officers were working together and were attached to the Special Operations Unit, working under the supervision of Superintendent of Excise Rohan Wijeratne.
The used methods vary from luring youth to purchase recreational drugs, especially at parties and night clubs, by using their own decoys to sell it, to drugs being delivered by mail or courier to their residences.
In reported incidences narrated by victims, it was told that once youth are arrested at either parties or night clubs, they are taken to their Department of Excise Offices and tortured into providing confessions under duress.
In some related cases in order to obtain confessions, arrested youth are handcuffed and hung by the beam of the ceiling and mercilessly hit with hose pipes. They then get the parents of the youth to their station and inform them that their children have confessed to their crimes and that they would be produced in High Court.
Parents are sternly warned that their children will not be granted bail for such admitted offences and will subsequently be jailed for lengthy periods of time.
