CA to hear Police officers petition to move students killing case out of north on 19 Oct.

By S.S. Selvanayagam

The Court of Appeal yesterday fixed for 19 October the petition filed by five police officers who had been arrested in connection with the shooting of two Jaffna University students.

The police officers are asking Court to transfer their case out of the Northern and Eastern provinces. They are also seeking the Court to issue an interim order restraining the continuation of their case before Jaffna Magistrate’s Court until the final determination of their application. The matter came up before Justice L.T.B. Dehideniya (CA President). The Counsel for the appellant police officers asked for another date to file a counter objection. The accused police officers D. Sarath Bandara Dissanayake, E.M. Jayawardene, P. Navaratna Bandara, S.A. Chandana Kumara Pathirana and Thangarasa Lankamaman in their petition cited the Jaffna police station OIC, OIC of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Attorney General as respondents.

Tirantha Walalaliyadde PC instructed by Shashika Mithuna Arachchi appeared for the petitioners. DSC Shanaka Wijesinghe appeared for the Attorney General. M.A. Sumanthiran appeared for the students who were shot.

The police officers are accused of killing Jaffna University students Vijayakumar Sulakshan (24) of Kandarodai in Chunnakam, Jaffna and Nadarajah Gajan (23) from Iranaimadu in Kilinochchi. The officers are now remanded at the Anuradhapura Remand Prison.

They pled that their life would be in danger if they continued to come to the Jaffna Courts.

Both of the slain youths were third-year students at the Jaffna University’s Faculty of Arts and were studying political science and journalism.  On the night of 20 October 2016, it was reported that they were gunned down by the police at a police checkpoint at Kulappiddy Junction, Kokuvil in Jaffna. The students sustained fatal injuries after they were shot at by the police for allegedly disobeying orders to stop their motorcycle at a roadblock. Although police initially denied shooting the students, a post-mortem revealed bullets in one of the youth’s bodies.