Sri Lanka Police: The rot starts at the top

A video circulating on social media this week showed a senior police officer manhandling two female constables. In another incident a police officer is seen threatening two female protesters and preventing them from carrying out a peaceful protest.

Police brutality is not alien to Sri Lanka. It has manifested in many forms for decades resulting in numerous enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, torture, degrading treatment and excessive use of force. Yet, the way policemen treat their own female personnel have shocked even those who expected nothing more from this branch of the State. For many years the Sri Lanka Police has been the domain of men. Sri Lanka Police has been a bastion of chauvinism, sexism and as it is now glaringly visible predatory behaviour towards female personnel.

Last year three female Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs) were promoted to the rank of Acting Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG). This followed the 2020 promotion of SSP Bimshani Jasin Arachchi to the same rank which was subsequently challenged in the courts by 32 of her male counterparts claiming that there were no vacancies for such a promotion. 

This assertion was not without merit in law. For in fact the structure of the Sri Lanka Police has been designed in such a way that it is differentiated on gender. Until the recent developments, there were only cadre positions available up to SSP for a female officer. Now after many years of legal battles, a handful of cadre positions has been created for female officers to become DIGs.

This is but one example that exposes the glaring discrimination that exists within the Police Department and the outdated political, bureaucratic, and patriarchal structures that prevail within it. While in other countries, including in South Asian neighbours, a female could rise through the ranks of the police even to become its chief, the Police Department in our country is still holding on to its archaic structures that differentiate officers according to their gender. Kiran Bedi, the first woman in India to join the officer ranks of the Police Service who later rose to the rank of Prisons Inspector General (IG) of New Delhi, was instrumental in making significant changes in the way prisoners were treated in India. Today she is an advocate for rights and a leader in India’s anti-corruption movement. The Sri Lanka Police has a long way to go to reach such inspirational levels. 

Despite female and male officers joining the police force undergoing the same training and being placed on the same salary scale, female officers are placed on separate career paths from the very beginning. Even their identities and ranks are differentiated with a prefix ‘W,’ From Woman Police Constable (W-PC) to now Woman-DIG. As a result, a female police officer can only progress within her designated gender-specific structure.

The old boys club that has prevailed within the Police Department has not done itself any favours in winning over the trust of the public by perpetuating its power structures that have seen confidence in the police deteriorate through the years. The recent public brutality by senior police officers towards their own female cadres demonstrate the deep-rooted sexism and immunity with violence is used against women.

The Inspector General of Police must immediately act against the officers who are manhandling female constables and take action to remedy the numerous disparities that prevent female police officers from carrying out their duties with dignity on par with their male colleagues, as they deserve.