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The little girl went to school as usual on Wednesday, March 11. By noon she had been abducted, allegedly by a person trusted by the family to teach the computer to her and her brother. He was known as “computer-uncle.”
The abductors thereafter began negotiations with the relatives and the father who is working in the Middle East. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs 30 million (US$260,450). While the family members were negotiating giving Rs 1 million, the girl’s body was found in a bag on Friday, March 13. Her throat had been slit and the bag containing her body was left in a drain on New Moors Lane in the heart of Trincomalee town.
Adding to the horror of the story, two suspects, the computer teacher Oswin Mervin Rinawushan and Vardharajen Janarathan, both died in police custody. The police reported that after Rinawushan had been arrested he was taken out and he then attacked the police. In retaliation the police shot him dead.
The story relating to Janarathan is that when he, too, was taken out by police in handcuffs, he managed to pick up some cyanide and swallow it. It is said there are a few more suspects. It is very likely that if they are arrested something similar will happen to them.
Further adding yet more horror to the story, the two main political parties of the east, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal and the Sri Lankan Freedom Party, have accused each other of being behind the kidnapping and killing of the little girl. The TMVP has been accused because the schoolbag belonging to little Varsha was found in the TMVP office.
The TMVP stated that a former party cadre, Karuna Amman, had joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party along with 2,000 other former TMVP members, and had taken some of the office equipment of the TMVP – and that they were somehow responsible for the misplaced schoolbag.
The issue for the public is not which one of these groups is responsible, but that it is the new political guardians of the Eastern Province that are allegedly behind the assassination of little Varsha for purposes of ransom.
It has also come to light recently that there have been several other abductions for ransom, including a leading businessman, the manager of a movie theater and a bus conductor in Trincomalee. The list is in fact much longer.
The essence of the problem is that the Sri Lankan government and its law enforcement apparatus are no longer capable of preventing serious crimes or of properly investigating crimes that have taken place. Varsha’s tragic story shocked the nation because of its horror. However, the failure of the police to protect people and investigate crimes is a common phenomenon faced in all parts of the country. Therefore, to lament Varsha’s tragedy and not to deal with the larger problem of failed policing in Sri Lanka is simply hypocritical.
The government needs to accept its duty to protect the people of the country against crime. If the police are unable to protect the people – as is demonstrated all the time – the government must decisively approach the problem of making the policing system effective. At the moment the government has shown no will to do this. It has no plans of any sort to make the law enforcement agencies capable of preventing or investigating crimes, which is their primary task.
It is not a function of the police to create sinister forms of entertainment by killing arrested suspects and providing ample publicity for such killings – hoping that people will have a happy hour in witnessing these things. Law enforcement has degenerated to such a state that publicity about the killing of alleged criminals is what passes for justice.
To handle this issue with intelligence and wisdom, the government should appoint an authority for the prevention of abductions. Bogus presidential commissions cannot do this task. The new authority should have a task force that can quickly gather the intelligence necessary to develop policies and strategies to prevent abductions. Without a comprehensive, strategic plan to deal with this problem, abductions will surely increase.
Sri Lanka also needs an institute for the study of the prevention of extrajudicial killings. Such killings have infested the law enforcement agencies to the point that the killing of alleged suspects is being promoted as an easy way of dealing with crime. This approach will further destroy the country’s rule of law system, which is already in a very bad way.
It is the duty of the government to demonstrate its will to take preventive measures against abductions and extrajudicial killings. This requires serious policy changes, based on a thorough review of the current situation and an analysis of the causes of the existing impasse.
If the government delays this process of reviewing and reforming the law enforcement system, it is itself contributing to abductions, such as that of Varsha, and the extrajudicial killings that are happening in every police station under the pretext that suspects in police custody are attacking policemen and therefore shooting them is justifiable. Such claims are a joke, yet the government allows such jokes to be played on the people.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia. His blog can be read at http://srilanka-lawlessness.com.)
