The Parliamentary Select Committee examining Sri Lanka’s lack of preparedness for Cyclone Ditwah has questioned senior police officers who were involved in responding to the disaster, Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror reported, citing Parliament’s Department of Communication.
Several Senior Superintendents of Police and Superintendents of Police from districts hit by the cyclone were summoned to give evidence on the measures they took during the disaster. The sitting was held at Parliament under the chairmanship of Health and Mass Media Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa.
Former Member of Parliament Nimal Piyatissa was also summoned. He was questioned over comments he made to the media at the time about the response measures.
Both outlets describe the questioning as having taken place “recently” rather than on Monday, and neither gives the date of the sitting.
Twelve days from the deadline
The session lands close to the committee’s reporting date. Parliament extended the deadline to September 19 in June, giving the committee three additional months beyond the original June 19 date set when it was appointed on January 21 under Standing Order 101.
Police are the third arm of the response to be called that has been publicly reported. The committee heard from the Director General of the Department of Meteorology, Athula Karunanayake, and the Disaster Management Centre’s Director General, Major General (Retd) Sampath Kotuwegoda, when it took evidence on the warning failures in April. Those sessions focused on why no institutional alert was issued before landfall; this one moves to what happened on the ground afterwards.
The committee was established on a motion by opposition members that described Ditwah as “the worst tragedy in the history of Sri Lanka.” The cyclone made landfall on November 27, 2025, killing 646 people, affecting 2.2 million and causing damage estimated at US$4.1 billion.
Not reported
Neither outlet names the officers summoned, identifies which districts they came from, or says how many appeared. Neither gives the substance of what the police told the committee, nor which of Piyatissa’s remarks were at issue. Neither says whether further witnesses are still to be called before the September 19 report is due, or whether the committee expects to meet that date.
