Police under siege

The past few months have seen several forays made by mobs into police stations. The latest incident is reported from Nallathanni, where mobs surrounded a police station and ran berserk after forest officers took into custody six persons over alleged illicit felling in the Sri Pada forest reserve.

The suspects, it is reported, had to be set free as the mob grew violent blocking as they did the main road with boulders. The mob, as our sister paper, the Divaina reported, consisted of estate workers.

These workers appear to have emulated their trade union leader Minister Arumugam Thondaman, who has set a very bad example for them in how to deal with the police.

A few months ago in Colombo he got involved in a similar incident. When the Borella police took in his driver for questioning over a traffic offence, he forced himself into the police station and plopped into the OIC’s chair threatening not to get up until his man was released.

The top-guns of the government had a sleepless night and couldn’t but do as he said given how important his support was for the survival of the government. In the end, as usual, Thondaman won and his man was released.

Recently his men set upon an officer of the Prime Ministerial Security Division at Bogambara, where the CWC convention was being held and got away with that as well.

Minister Thondaman, however, is not the only politician to act in this manner. This week, a mob led by a UNF parliamentarian with over two hundred of his supporters stormed a police station in Chilaw and forcibly got six kasippu dealers released. They had been taken into custody by a special team of excise officers sent from Colombo as the local police were unable to do so for fear of this political potentate.

It was also the other day that in Ratnapura, another UNF parliamentarian forced himself with his men into a police station and forced the police to release his supporters in custody. A police high ranker was also threatened by the gang led by the MP.

Those who may have expected a change under the present political dispensation must be watching this situation with disgust and anger.

In the north and the east the situation is far worse and borders on anarchy. The people living there come under two systems of law enforcement as the LTTE, too, has set up ‘police stations.’

The police have been rendered impotent by the LTTE led mobs, who set upon the police or stage hartals to secure the release of suspects in police custody or even in remand. Worst of all, a constable has been ‘remanded’ by the LTTE for having just strayed into an area considered under LTTE control according to the MoU. A soldier too is languishing in an LTTE dungeon for having ‘committed the same offence.’

We hear of various criticisms against the police for being corrupt and wanting in carrying out their duties. Last week Minister of the Interior John Amaratunga unleashed a verbal attack on the police when he met a group of senior police officers. He lambasted them for the growing number of allegations of corruption, dereliction of duty etc., levelled against the police. The views he expressed were, no doubt, shared by many. But as we pointed out in these columns a few days ago, the trying conditions under which the police function, too, have to be appreciated.

If the police cannot take in kasippu dealers, crack down on drug barons, round up illicit fellers, then how can they maintain law and order?

The incident reported from Nallathanni is far too serious to be considered an isolated one. It has to be viewed against the backdrop of the growing impotency of the police vis a vis various forces especially political interference.

Stringent action is called for against those who storm police station as well as others who through their positions or private armies have arrogated to themselves the powers of the police.