The Sri Lanka Red Cross Society (SLRCS) said it found “no credible evidence” that an official had solicited “sexual favours” from Tamil war widows in return for houses from an Indian government-funded project.

In a press release on Tuesday the organisation said it takes “any allegation of this nature extremely seriously and appropriate action was immediately taken to investigate the complaint”.

“In its conclusions, the panel found no credible evidence to support the complaint relating to misconduct on the part of the SLRCS technical officer,” stated the press release.

It continued to say “the panel did find that the allegations had an internal dimension which will be addressed in accordance with the constitution of the SLRCS” and the report and documents from the inquiry was handed over to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Law & Order & Prison Reforms.

Though the inquiry found no evidence of wrong doing, the Sunday Times had earlier reported SLRCS Kilinochchi Branch Secretary Thampu Sethupathy had received more than 30 written and verbal complaints with similar allegations of demands for sexual favours.

“For the last two months we have been getting this kind of complaint from the public, particularly women,” he said. “Initially we did not consider this as a serious issue until we received some of the complaints which were very sensitive, with a similar pattern. It was thereafter we brought this to the attention of the head office.”

“There are 11 villages in the district. I am afraid there may be many cases in other villages too.”

See our earlier post: Red Cross official solicited 'sexual favours' for houses from Tamil war widows (12 Oct 2015)