SUSPECT IN A BID TO TRANSFER CASE OUT OF N/E

Jaffna varsity students killing:

Court of Appeal yesterday (17) granted further date to petitioner-police officers to file Counter Objection on August 3 in respect of the appeal filed by five police officers who had been arrested in connection with the shooting incident where two Jaffna University students were gunned down.

The suspect police officers are seeking the Court to transfer their case out of Northern and Eastern provinces.

They are also seeking the Court to issue interim order restraining the continuation of their case before Jaffna Magistrate’s Court until the final determination of their application.

The matter came up before Justice L.t.b.dehideniya (President/ca). Counsel for the appellant-police officers moved for further date to file counter objection.

Suspect police officers in the said shooting incident (1) D.sarath Bandara Dissanayake, (2) E.m.jayawardene, (3) P. Navaratna Bandara, (4) S.a.chandana Kumara Pathirana and (5) Thangarasa Lankamaman in their petition cited Jaffna Police Station OIC, OIC of the Criminal Investigation Department and the Attorney General as Respondents.

Tirantha Walalaliyadde PC instructed by Shashika Mithuna Arachchi appeared for the petitioners. DSC Shanaka Wijesinghe appeared for the Attorney General. M.a.sumanthiran appeared for the aggrieved party the students.

The petitioner police officers are suspects for allegedly causing death of two students of the Jaffna University Vijayakumar Sulakshan (24) of Kandarodai in Chunnakam, Jaffna and Nadarajah Gajan (23) from Iranaimadu of Kilinochchi are now remanded at Anuradhapura Remand Prisons.

They plead that their life would be endangered if they continue to attend Jaffna Courts.

Both were third year students at the Jaffna University of Faculty of Arts and were studying political science and journalism.

On the night of 20 October 2016, it is reported that they were allegedly gunned down by the police at a police check point at Kulappiddy Junction, Kokuvil, Jaffna, the students sustained fatal injuries after they were shot at by the police for disobeying orders to stop their motorcycle at the road block.

Although police initially denied shooting the students, a postmortem report, however, found bullets in one of the bodies.