Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said in Parliament yesterday that it was paradoxical to see the MPs of a party who could not punish their own Pradeshiya Sabha Chairmen who raped and killed innocent women on their watch sometimes back, demanding action against underworld members.
“When the Pradeshiya Sabha Chairmen of your party were on a spree of raping and killing women you were in the government but did nothing. You didn’t do anything to prevent that. You protected thieves and maintained underworld members. Now you are questioning. What right do you have to talk against underworld today? The PM asked the protesting MPs.
The Prime Minister said so in response to a question raised by Joint Opposition’s Moneragala District MP Padma Udayashantha Gunasekera. The MP demanded to know from the government its position on the recent media reports that a Minister was keeping five underworld members as his bodyguards.
Prime Minister Wickremesinghe said that he had instructed police to conduct an investigation into the allegations of ministers obtaining the services of underworld members for their protection.
He said that he had also instructed the police to ascertain the veracity of those media reports and also to find the origin and sources of those reports.
Law and Order State Minister Nalin Bandara Jayamaha said that the government would also inform the country of the lists of underworld members who had attended the weddings of powerful politicians of the former government.
Allegations of assault, rape and murder abound as the powers that be run amok with impunity The number of local government politicians breaking the law is rapidly increasing, with most of them belonging to the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Last week alone, five incidents involving Pradeshiya Sabha (PS) politicians—four from the UPFA and one from the UNP—were reported by media. A criminal case related to a Deputy Minister was also taken up in court.
On Monday, the Attanagalle Magistrate’s Court ordered the impounding of Deputy Petroleum Industries Minister Sarana Gunawardena’s passport. Mr. Gunawardena is accused of having fired a gun into the air, issuing death threats and kidnapping a child in the village of Weerangula in 2009.
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27 Nov 2017 – A case filed against former Akuressa Pradeshiya Sabha Chairman Saruwa Liyanage Sunil who was indicted for raping an underage girl at his …
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6 Jul 2017 – Former chairman of Akuressa Pradeshiya Sabha Saruwa Liyanage … against him that he threw a party to celebrate having raped… … was a political meeting there, and that participants wereentertained with food and drinks.