Report on journalist attack handed over to President

Thursday, 4 August 2011 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Barely three days after Sri Lanka’s top cop, Inspector General N.K.Ilangakoon, was asked to investigate the attack on a senior journalist of a Tamil newspaper based in Jaffna, he submitted an interim report on the incident.

Gnanasundaram Kuhanathan, 59, the news editor of Uthayan was beaten by unidentified men with iron bars and left for dead near his home, on Friday. This was the second such attack on an Uthayan journalist in the past two months.

A reporter from the paper S. Kavitharan was attacked on 28 May. Uthayan supports the Tamil National Alliance, the umbrella organisation of Tamil parties, which openly supported the Tamil Tigers earlier.

“He submitted the report to the President today,” Bandula Jayasekara, Presidential Spokesman told The Hindu.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa ordered the country’s top police official to investigate the incident. Though there have been similar investigations in the past, this is the first time that report on an attack was being submitted in such a short time. Officials pointed out that this is the first case of attack on the media that Ilangakoon has directly supervised since he took over as Inspector General. (www.thehindu.com)