23 October 2024 07:45 am Views - 93
The Committee targets Ravi and Shani
By Ajith Siriwardana
Claiming that a committee appointed by a President does not have any jurisdiction just as in the case of Presidential Commission of Inquiry (PCoI), Cabinet Spokesman Minister Vijitha Herath said yesterday that the government would not accept the report of the Committee appointed by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe just before the Presidential election as it is politically motivated.
He told the weekly media briefing to announce Cabinet decisions that the committee headed by retired Judge A.N.J. De Alwis was appointed on June 12, 2024 while expecting the committee to submit the report on September 15, just before the Presidential election.
The Minister said the committee has submitted its report to the President on September 17 at the President’s House on Flower Road without any media publicity and that it had been submitted to the Presidential Secretariat on September 18.
He said the committee only targeted former Senior Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Ravi Seneviratne and former CID Director Shani Abeysekara after they joined the National People’s Power’s (NPP’s) Retired Police Forum.
“NPP’s Retired Police Forum was formed on June 9, 2024. The said committee was appointed by the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe on June 12, 2024, just three days after the Retired Police Forum was formed. The purpose of the committee was to investigate the actions and responses of Sri Lanka’s intelligence and security authorities and investigate the Vavunathivu incident. The second committee was appointed to investigate the video released by Channel-4 on the Easter attacks. These two committees are not like Presidential commissions. These committees are usually appointed to obtain information for the President’s awareness. Udaya Gammanpila, who tries to become a super star, is talking about these committee reports but not the reports of the previous Presidential Commission reports. We will use positive matters in the two reports in our fresh probe,” he said.
The Minister said the Supreme Court in its judgement on the Fundamental Rights petitions filed by victims of the Easter Sunday bomb attacks had not convicted any of them, adding that only former President Maithripala Sirisena, Chief of State Intelligence Service (Sri Lanka) Nilantha Jayawardena and former IGP Pujith Jayasundara were convicted in the case.
When asked whether the government will remove the two officials pending investigations, he said neither the Presidential Commission led by Supreme Court Judge Janak de Silva nor the Parliament Select Committee (PSC) had held Ravi Seneviratne or Shani Abeysekara as being responsible for the Easter Sunday bomb attacks and that they would not be removed from their positions for any reason.
He said those who had been forced to remove the two officials were doing this with vested interests and that the government would not succumb to such attempts. “Ravi and Shani were removed by the political authority when they were handling the investigations into the Easter attacks reasonably.
Families of the Easter attack victims know this really well and people who expect justice do not want these two officials removed. Only those who have vested interests want them removed. We will not do it,” he said.
The Minister said, however, that the government will not hesitate to take action against any officials if found guilty following a proper investigation.