The Supreme Court has held that three officers attached to the Meetiyagoda Police Station violated the fundamental rights of a police sergeant whom they assaulted and locked in a holding cell, and has ordered two of them to pay him Rs. 200,000 out of their own pockets.
A three-judge bench of Justices Janak De Silva, Dr Sobhitha Rajakaruna and Menaka Wijesundera found that the petitioner’s rights under Articles 11 and 13(1) of the Constitution had been infringed, the Daily Mirror reported. Article 11 is the Constitution’s absolute prohibition on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; Article 13(1) protects against arbitrary arrest and detention.
What the court found
The petitioner, a sergeant stationed at Baddegama, complained of being beaten at the Meetiyagoda station in December 2011 after a dispute over a house owned by his wife, a former Grama Niladhari. The house had been let to a relative of the fourth respondent, and his wife had repeatedly asked the tenant to leave. The fourth respondent is alleged to have entered the sergeant’s home while he was out, threatened his wife and mother-in-law, and then threatened to kill the sergeant when confronted.
The couple complained about him at Meetiyagoda. According to the petition, an Inspector at the station instead accused the sergeant of assaulting the fourth respondent and struck him while two other officers held him down. He said he was dragged along the ground, locked in a cell, assaulted a second time, and later treated at Balapitiya Hospital.
Writing the judgment, Justice Wijesundera held the account was borne out by medical evidence, by affidavits and by complaints made immediately afterwards. The medico-legal report recorded four non-grievous injuries and noted a history of police assault. Affidavits from five police officers corroborated the sergeant’s version — among them an officer who saw him in the cell with a split lip and torn clothes.
The respondents denied everything, saying the sergeant and his wife had assaulted the fourth respondent outside the station. The court noted they produced no medico-legal report or other evidence of any injury to him.
Two points worth noting
The case was corroborated from inside the station that detained him: five serving officers swore affidavits supporting a colleague against three of their own.
And the delay is extreme. Fundamental rights applications must reach the Supreme Court within one month of the infringement under Article 126(2), so this petition was filed in the weeks after December 2011 — roughly 14 years and 10 months before judgment.
Not reported
The filing names none of the officers, and does not say which two of the three must pay, how the Rs. 200,000 is split, or why the third was not ordered to contribute. It gives no date for the judgment itself, says nothing about costs against the State, and does not say whether the officers face disciplinary action, remain in service, or hold their former ranks. The outcome of the couple’s original complaint against the fourth respondent is not stated, nor is whether the sergeant is still serving.
No other verified newsroom had filed its own account of this ruling at the time of writing. Similar Supreme Court awards for police abuse have been reported before, but each concerns a different petitioner and a different station, and none has been used here.
