The gallows at Welikada Prison remain ready for use and two executioners are attached to the facility on standby, the Daily Mirror reported on Wednesday, citing a prison official.
The two are permitted to live at their own residences and receive standard government salaries while on call. Their identities are being kept confidential for their safety, the newspaper said.
Welikada holds the country’s only structurally operational gallows. A second set historically existed at Bogambara Prison in Kandy, but that facility has since closed, leaving Welikada as the sole site maintaining execution infrastructure.
Prison authorities put the death row population at 806 inmates. Of those, 58 were convicted in drug-related cases — 52 men and six women. One foreign national is among those held under sentence of death.
What the role involves
In a companion report, the Daily Mirror said the two executioners are regular Prisons Department employees who carry out routine duties when no execution is scheduled.
Were a date to be set, they would report to the prison the previous day to inspect the gallows and equipment, assess the condemned prisoner’s measurements to determine the required rope length, and run a test using a weighted sandbag. On the day itself, one executioner would accompany the prisoner to the gallows while the other operated the equipment.
The post was historically hereditary, passing from father to son, the paper said. That practice has ended and executioners are now recruited through the department’s regular employment process.
Why it is being raised now
Sri Lanka retains capital punishment in law but has not carried out an execution since the 1970s. The question of resuming executions returned to the agenda at the “Ratama Ekata” National Steering Council meeting at the Presidential Secretariat on Monday, chaired by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, where the death penalty for drug offences was discussed. Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa has since said the measure is only a proposal and that no final decision has been taken.
The Daily Mirror also reported that retaining capital punishment on the statute books complicates efforts to extradite Sri Lankan organised crime suspects from Europe, where many countries decline to send individuals to jurisdictions that impose the death penalty.
The Archdiocese of Colombo has said it does not support capital punishment, calling it inadmissible under Catholic teaching.
Both reports are attributed to prison sources and were carried only by the Daily Mirror; no other newsroom had published the staffing details at the time of writing.
