Anuradhapura Chief Magistrate Siyapath Sasindu Wickramaratne has barred three men who served as officers at the Anuradhapura Headquarters Police, and a former municipal councillor, from leaving the country in connection with the fatal shooting of Iron Ranasinghe, alias “SF Lokka,” Hiru News reported on Tuesday.
The order names former Chief Inspector Sanjeeva Mahanama, Sub-Inspector R. M. Balasuriya, Police Sergeant Douglas Appuhamy and former Anuradhapura Municipal Councillor Ravindra Bandara. The magistrate directed the Court Registrar to forward it immediately to the Controller General of Immigration and Emigration, and issued it after considering a motion from the Criminal Investigation Department seeking travel restrictions to help its continuing inquiry.
The court refused to let the CID announce a confession for the suspect
The more unusual exchange concerned a different man. Officers of the CID’s Organised Crimes Investigation Division arrested Kasun Madusanka, alias “Batta,” 39, of Kudapalandikulama in Anuradhapura, on 7 October, after six years in which he had evaded capture. Prison officials produced him in court on Tuesday.
During the proceedings, officials from the CID’s Organized Homicide Investigation Unit told the court that Madusanka was prepared to make a voluntary confession.
Chief Magistrate Wickramaratne did not accept the submission. He told the CID that where a suspect in custody wishes to confess, the suspect must tell the court personally rather than have the investigating agency relay it, and questioned the legal basis on which the CID was making representations about a confession on the accused’s behalf when the request must come from the accused.
Appearing for the suspect, Attorney-at-Law Kalinga Ravindra submitted that his client would have to declare any such intention himself, and that the CID had instead put its own position to the court. He went further, describing the CID’s conduct as a dramatic narrative constructed to unlawfully arrest former Anuradhapura Headquarters officers who, he said, had no connection to the crime.
The court ordered prison officials to produce Madusanka before a psychiatrist, through the Judicial Medical Officer at Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital, and said it would rule on whether to permit a voluntary confession after reading the psychiatric report. He was remanded further until 26 October.
Who “SF Lokka” was
Ranasinghe, a former soldier in the Sri Lanka Army Special Forces, was shot dead on 5 August 2020 while travelling in a car near the Dahaiyagama railway crossing in Anuradhapura. He had himself been named by authorities as the primary suspect in several criminal cases, among them the murder of the Guinness World Record-holding karate champion Wasantha Zoysa.
The officers are not new to this investigation
Tuesday’s order reads as a first move against serving-era police officers only if the case is read from today. It is not.
The Daily Mirror reported on 17 October 2024 that Anuradhapura Additional Magistrate Manodi Hewawasam ordered every state and private bank in Sri Lanka — including the Bank of Ceylon, People’s Bank, Commercial Bank, Sampath Bank, Seylan Bank, Nations Trust Bank, National Development Bank, the State Mortgage Bank and the National Savings Bank — to hand over the account details of a former ASP, a Sub Inspector, a Police Sergeant, a woman and one other person to the CID’s Illegal Assets or Property Investigation Division. That order was made on submissions by the division’s OIC, Chief Inspector Sampath Rajakaruna, and covered both the SF Lokka murder and a shooting at the vehicle of former parliamentarian Uddika Premaratne.
In that hearing the CID told the court it suspected several police officers and civilians of involvement, and that the killing is believed to have been a contract killing for which police officers and another individual allegedly received payments. That is the theory the financial inquiry was built on, and it explains why police officers are the subject of a travel ban two years later.
One caution: the 2024 filing did not name the five account-holders, and the ranks do not line up exactly — it refers to a former ASP, where Tuesday’s order names a former Chief Inspector. The Sub-Inspector and Sergeant descriptions match. This desk is not in a position to say the individuals are the same, and does not assert it.
A note on the name
The victim’s name is rendered differently across newsrooms: Hiru uses Iron Ranasinghe, the Daily Mirror’s 2024 report uses Iroshan Ranasinghe, and the 2020 reports of the killing led on the alias alone. The alias “SF Lokka” is the only consistently stable identifier.
Not reported
Hiru does not say in what capacity the four men under travel ban are being treated — whether as suspects, as persons of interest or as witnesses — nor what connects the former municipal councillor to the case. No term or expiry is given for the travel ban. The court’s reason for ordering a psychiatric evaluation before accepting a confession is not stated, and neither is the ground on which Madusanka was located and arrested after six years. No other verified newsroom had filed on Tuesday’s proceedings at the time of writing.
