THE STORY OF A CAT AND MARU SIRA IN DEATH ROW

The last days of Maru Sira: not fiction but unbelievable fact

Believe it or not, Maru Sira alias or D.J. Siripala was hanged on 5th August 1975 on a stretcher due to a cat.

This week I was at the Kandy Courts Complex, discussing with some attorney’s about the spectacle of large crowds visiting the Bogambara Prisons that had held men and women associated with various crimes. As we were speaking, a ‘brick’ was dropped by an attorney who said that he had been a prison official and had witnessed Maru Siria hanged, not a judicial hanging, but it was to meet an order to ‘hang him’. And officials performed their duty as there was no reprieve. The man in charge of the days proceedings according to lawyer Ranjith Bandara Wellikumbura, was a jailor, Don Fernando.

The question arose as to how Maru Sira was brought on a stretcher to be hung and how his sarong came l oose while he was been hanged. All those around Maru Sira were frightened that Maru Sira was shamming for a reprieve, and that he would attack at any time. Even the ‘black belt ‘ jailor was on his guard.

Wellikumbura who was in the prison service at the time Maru Sira was in Bogambera gave a vivid account on the manner Maru Sira was hanged t o an openmouthed audience. To a question posed by a keen listener, he said that the prison authorities never gave him the sedative drug ‘Largactil’. According to him some tablets were brought to him by a cat, Maru Sira had made his pet! How did it happen? Maru Sira’s feline ally could come and go from The alternative to hanging is lashes which an accused in any crime would remember for a lifetime and never repeat the crime again. Not just one or two lashes, but at least twenty Maru Sira’s cell quite freely. After all it was a cat; no questions were asked. Prison officers guarding the death cells did not bother about a cat visiting a condemned man.

The hanging of ‘ Maru Sira ‘ was such an important affair that the prison superintendent who was to go on a scholarship and was on leave, made it a point to be at the hanging.

During the course of an official public inquiry held at the former Kandy District Court , where the writer was present, Times of Ceylon journalist the late Marikkar who first broke the story that Maru Sira was killed, before he was hanged was questioned and at the pain of ‘ contempt of Court ‘ when he blurted out how he got the information, prostituting the erstwhile ethical privilege of not divulging information. At recess he told me,“ Machan, I cannot afford to go behind bars as no one will look after my family; to hell with standing for rights.”

“After the hanging of Maru Sira, all officers were called and told that none should breathe a word about the manner Maru Sira came by his judicial death”, said Wellikumbura. The officers agreed. Marikkar was secretly informed of the manner as to how Maru Sira was brought to the gallows. The story that was splashed in the Times of Ceylon and it set the ball rolling for an inquiry.

Wellikumbura said he saw how a snoring Maru Sira been brought on a stretcher to the gallows. But all around him , even the chief jailor said to see a man who defied the law and who had been keeping the masses at his finger tips was pathetic. He said that those who advocate to bring back the death penalty, do not understand the agony of men in “Death Row”.

In a recent incident at Bogambara, [which is no more] that when the news that a new rope for hanging was brought to replace the old one death row inmates started purging.

Wellikumbura says that during his period of service in the Prisons Department, he knew only two men who had faced the gallows in the spirit they are serving a death sentence because they had committed an offence. One said he was Karunaratne from Ampitiya and the other a police sergeant. Most of the others had gone to the Gallows in a manner that cannot be described.

So, how did Maru Sira obtain the Largactil? “The answer is simple. Maru Sira had a relation Ratnayake who was an orderly in the Kandy Prison Hospital,” said Wellikumbura. “There had been an understanding between Maru Sira and this orderly, [who was interdicted later] to strap the tablets on the hind leg of the cat and when the cat, nuzzled up to Maru Sira’ he collected the tablets and kept it till the time came. So he would have collected as much of the tablets and then had taken the tablets in one go. That is how he fell asleep and snored until he was ‘ hanged by the neck until dead."

Responding to a question Weliikumbura, said, “The alternative to hanging is lashes which an accused in any crime would remember for a lifetime and never repeat the crime again. Not just one or two lashes, but at least twenty.”

He said that judicial orders for lashing had been stopped. But lashing could be the remedy if people advocate that hanging is not the answer for murder or for any other related crime, especially in a Buddhist country, but bearing in mind that no one escape punishment for his crimes.