EDITORIAL - Will there be a second crime?

22 July 2014 06:30 pm Views - 1892

Speaking to the media in Colombo, soon after the verdict on British Red Cross worker Khuram Shaikh was delivered on Friday, the brother of Khuram, Nasser Shaikh, said that he was “not ready to forgive the initial delays involved with the prosecution of his brother’s murder,” that took close to two and a half years before a trial date was set for the case.   
No doubt, this remark was a clear indictment on the law enforcement mechanism in Sri Lanka.

He was reminding the authorities dragging their feet initially despite the fact that Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa who headed the Parliamentary Select Committee for the impeachment of Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake had said that the verdict in the Khuram case showed the “independence of Sri Lanka’s Judiciary and the efficiency of the Attorney General’s Department.”
The murder of the British aid worker and gang rape of his Russian girlfriend Victoria Alexandrovna in 2012 at a resort in Tangalla were heinous acts, no doubt and the way they tortured the victims according to the proceedings of the case manifests the barbarity to the core.

But the main suspect, the former Tangalla Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman Sampath Chandrapushpa Vidanapathirana was at large for about a year without being arrested by the Sri Lanka Police that was one of the arms of the Defence Establishment that decimated the dreaded LTTE.
Finally, the situation drew the attention of Prince Charles who took up the matter with the Sri Lankan authorities when he visited the island for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in November last year.

Considering that situation, it is natural for one to ask as to how the Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman was so confident that he would not be answerable even if he brutally killed a foreigner and led a gang that raped a foreign woman, while so many people were watching.
And no one had any doubt as to why he was not arrested for about a year after the heinous crime.

He ran riot for a trivial matter and was not brought to book just because he was representing the ruling party and he might have been associated with some bigwigs.
The situation seems to have had an enormous bearing on the victims’ relatives and it was that pain of mind that was expressed by Nasser at the above mentioned media briefing.
The countrymen are certain as to whether the PS Chairman would have been arrested and given at least two year prison sentence, leave alone Capital Punishment, had the murdered man been a Sri Lankan.

They know what happened in similar situations. For instance, a Policeman was assaulted, his car was set on fire and finally he was forced to resign from the Police Service due to agony he had to undergo after he imposed a spot fine on a driver of a Deputy Minister who drove his vehicle on the Southern Expressway breaking the speed limit.
Nasser and the British High Commission seem to be in doubt on the justice meted out to Khuram’s relatives and Alexanrovna through the verdict of the case by the Colombo High Court since the PS Chairman has the right to appeal against it and there are still chances of a miscarriage of justice.

The High Commission had said that they would continue to monitor any development in the case closely. Nasser said that he would “be shocked or very surprised should the sentence be minimised at some point.” He had also said that it was up to the present government to ensure that it didn’t happen and guarantee that the integrity within the government and the Judicial System continued.

It is clear that a barbaric crime had taken place. If the persons found guilty of it today are found not guilty at a future appellate trial the Police would close their books and it could be another crime without perpetrators.
That would be a second crime against the victims.