The National Police Commission has cancelled with immediate effect the transfers of several senior police officers, including Senior Deputy Inspector General Ranmal Kodituwakku and Police Narcotic Bureau DIG Ashoka Dharmasena, reversing an order issued only days earlier in connection with the Colombo Port narcotics case.
The Commission took the decision at a meeting on Thursday following a request from the Inspector General of Police, the Daily Mirror reported.
The cancelled transfers also cover the Director of the Police Narcotic Bureau, two Superintendents of Police and several female Police Inspectors, among other officers.
Why the transfers were ordered
Police Headquarters had recently moved to transfer several Senior DIGs with immediate effect, citing institutional requirements and — explicitly — a measure to ensure the independence of ongoing investigations, Hiru News reported. Kodituwakku’s name was on that list.
That reasoning is what makes the reversal significant. Kodituwakku oversees the Central Crime Investigation Bureau, the unit whose officers made the seizure of crystal methamphetamine at the Colombo Port — and he is also among the officers whose conduct in the case is being examined.
On Tuesday he attended the Criminal Investigation Department to give a statement about the seizure. Hiru reports that session lasted approximately three hours, and puts the value of the consignment found concealed in a container at the port at more than Rs. 8 billion.
An unexplained about-turn
The sequence is unusual. The IGP sought the transfers; the IGP has now asked for them to be cancelled. Neither outlet reports a reason for the change of position, and no statement from the Commission or from Police Headquarters explaining it had been published at the time of writing.
The reversal lands in the same week that the IGP directed the CID to open a criminal investigation into alleged negligence and delay by officers handling intelligence on the same consignment, escalating what had been an internal departmental inquiry.
The National Police Commission, not the IGP, holds the power of transfer over officers at this rank, which is why both the original order and its cancellation required the Commission to act.
What is not settled
Neither report names every officer affected, states when the original transfer order was issued, or says whether the officers had taken up their new posts before the cancellation. The two accounts also differ in emphasis: the Daily Mirror attributes the cancellation to an IGP request, while Hiru’s account describes the original transfers without reporting who sought them undone.
