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The officer in charge of the Angulana police station and six other officers of this police force are reported to have been arrested for causing the deaths of these boys. It is also reported that the girl who is said to have been teased was known to the officer in charge.

Angry villagers attacked the police station and even stopped the trains. The army and anti-riot squads had to be brought in to bring the situation under control and return the train service to normal.

This senseless murder of two youths reflects the terrible breakdown of police discipline in the country. Despite many interventions by local civil society groups and international human rights organizations, the government has not taken any notice.

Just last week Nipuna Ramanayake, a technical college student, complained that he was kidnapped and tortured by policemen of the Colombo Criminal Investigation Division at the house of the division director, Vas Gunawardene. The director's son and wife were accused of arranging the kidnapping and the assault. Despite the complaints of the parents and the media coverage of this crime, no one has been arrested and no disciplinary process has been initiated.

Teasing a girl is not a criminal offence. There was no reason at all to arrest the two boys. Even if they were arrested, they should have been released within the shortest possible time. Instead, the parents and villagers allege that the two boys were kept at the police station and were severely beaten by the officer in charge and six police officers.

When the two boys died, their bodies were taken out and dumped on a section of railway track. The idea, of course, would have been to create the impression that the deaths took place outside the police station.

Police spokesman Ranjith Gunasekara reportedly said the boys were involved in drug peddling. The same police spokesman was reported to have said that the CCD director's son was not involved in the earlier assault on Nipuna Ramanayake.

He also said at a press conference that “underground elements” should be ready to die, when questioned about extrajudicial killings of alleged criminals while in police custody. The inspector general of police and high-ranking police officers continue to tolerate this kind of public pronouncement by the official spokesman for the police.

Full responsibility for the murder of these boys should be borne by the inspector general of police and the deputy inspector generals who are in charge of the police force. Police officials responsible for the Angulana area are also directly responsible for this gross abuse of police authority and the resulting murder.

The government is also responsible for the murder because of continuous neglect in dealing with police criminality, which constantly perpetrates extrajudicial killings, gruesome torture, gross abuse of power through the fabrication of cases, and complete insensitivity to public opinion and public interest.

Though the officer in charge and six other police officers are said to have been arrested, there is no guarantee that there will be a proper inquiry into these murders. If left to the police superiors of the same area, it is most likely that after the heat of the moment dies down, this crime will be hushed up in the same way that many hundreds of other crimes have been hushed up. If there is to be a credible inquiry, the inquiry should be handed over to a Special Inquiry Unit of the Criminal Investigation Division.

It is time that the government appoints a team of Supreme Court judges to inquire into extrajudicial killings by the police, the widespread practice of torture, the common practice of fabrication of charges against innocent persons, and the general breakdown of discipline within the police service. The revolt of the local people of Angulana is symbolic of the revolt that exists throughout the country against the policing system that takes to crime so easily, and carelessly and ruthlessly abuses the rights of the people.

It is time for the Parliament to take notice of this tremendous collapse of the country's prime law enforcement agency. In 2001, Parliament almost unanimously recognized the collapse of this public institution and wanted to remedy this by taking steps to regulate appointments, promotions, transfers and the disciplinary controls of the police.

For this purpose the Constitutional Council and a National Police Commission were created by way of a constitutional amendment, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. Even this inadequate remedial measure was abandoned later by the government.

The present state of lawlessness is a result of all this neglect. It is time that the government, opposition and civil society take stock of the situation, and take a decisive step in order to bring the country's law enforcement agency within the framework of the rule of law.

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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.)