Opposition MPs led by Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa are signing a motion asking the Speaker to appoint a special parliamentary select committee to investigate the death of the tusker Kavantissa.
Hiru News reported at 10.58 a.m. that the opposition had decided to seek the committee, and that signing took place on Wednesday ahead of the motion being handed to the Speaker.
The stated purposes are threefold: to establish the truth about the death of an animal Hiru describes as a national natural heritage, to determine whether every party involved discharged its responsibilities properly, and to obtain justice for the tusker.
Who is signing
The Daily Mirror reported at 11.26 a.m. that MPs “have begun signing” the motion, and that Samagi Jana Balawegaya members and other parliamentarians — Dilith Jayaweera and Ramanathan Archchuna among them — have already signed.
That detail matters more than the names. The signatories are not confined to the Opposition Leader’s own party, which is what a select committee request needs if it is to be read as a cross-party demand rather than an SJB position.
The two filings differ on how far the process has gone. Hiru describes the signing as carried out and the motion as being handed to the Speaker; the Daily Mirror, filing half an hour later, says signing has begun. Neither reports the motion as delivered, and neither gives the number of signatures collected or the number required.
This would be the fourth inquiry
A select committee would not be the first body examining Kavantissa’s death. It would be the fourth, and each sits in a different branch of the state.
- The Director General of Wildlife has appointed a three-member committee to examine the whole treatment process and related events, NewsFirst reported at 8.49 a.m. It is chaired by Anoma Priyadarshani, Director of Operations at the Department of National Zoological Gardens, with A. L. Basnayake, Director of Investigations at the Ministry of Environment, and H. E. L. de Seram, Senior Lecturer at the University of Peradeniya’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. Director General Ranjan Marasinghe said the committee has been instructed to report within one month.
- The President has separately appointed an expert committee into the death.
- The Criminal Investigation Department has opened its own inquiry. Police said CID officers recorded statements on Tuesday from officers attached to several Range Forest Offices.
The three existing inquiries are all executive. A select committee would be the only one answerable to Parliament rather than to a ministry, a department or the President — which is the point of asking for it, and the reason the request is itself a political act.
The question behind the request
The phrasing the opposition has chosen — whether all parties “fulfilled their responsibilities” — points at the state’s own conduct rather than at whoever fired the shot.
That is already a live dispute. The veterinary surgeon who treated the tusker resigned this week after a social media campaign against him, and the Wildlife Department opened its treatment inquiry in the same period. In Parliament on Tuesday, Namal Rajapaksa alleged that the Environment Minister supplied the firearms used to shoot animals raiding chena cultivations — an allegation the minister has not publicly answered.
Kavantissa, one of the country’s largest tuskers, collapsed in a paddy field in the Siyambalangamuwa Yaya 3 area and died on Friday 16 October while under treatment for a gunshot wound to his front right leg.
Not reported
Neither filing states when the motion will be handed to the Speaker, how many MPs have signed, or what the threshold is for a select committee to be constituted. Neither reports a government response, and neither says whether the Speaker has indicated he will act on it. No filing explains how a select committee’s remit would relate to the three inquiries already running, or whether the opposition regards those as inadequate — the motion’s own wording implies it, but no MP is quoted saying so.
The two outlets spell the tusker’s name differently: Hiru and this archive use Kavantissa, the Daily Mirror Kawantissa. They refer to the same animal.