Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court ordered the state to pay RS 1 million to the parents of two men who disappeared whilst being held in custody of Batticaloa police in October 2008.
The court further ordered the Officer-in-(OIC) of the Batticaloa police station, to pay the families Rs 50,000 for failing “to provide equal protection of law to their missing sons who were subject to torture.”
The compensation order was in relation to the disappearance of Selvarajah Gunaseelan and K Kugadas of Batticaloa. The bodies of the two grocery shop assistants were found tied to concrete posts at Polamunai beach few days after they disappeared whilst in police custody. Mr Gunaseelan and Mr Kugadas were detained, without reason for arrest, during a joint surveillance operation by Sri Lanka’s Special Task Force (STF) and local police.
During the investigation OIC Wickramasinghe and his two counterparts Police Sergeant W A Raputhunga and Sub Inspector Udayanga claimed that the two detained had been discharged on October 4.
This directly contradicted statements by the family who maintained that they had seen the two family members in police custody on October 4 and were told to return on October 5 for their release.
To date the police have been unable to produce documentation confirming the discharge of the two individuals.
Citing loopholes in Sri Lanka’s constitution and the Convention against Torture, the Supreme Court judge said,
“Each state party shall ensure in its legal system that the victim of an act of torture obtains redress and has an enforceable right to fair and adequate compensation, including the means for as full rehabilitation as possible. In the event of the death of the victim as a result of an act of torture, his dependants shall be entitled to compensation. Although the right to life is not expressly recognised as a fundamental right, that right is impliedly recognised in some provisions of Chapter III of the Constitution.”
A criminal investigation seeking prosecutions for these events is yet to be set up.
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