Prison deaths: Cruel deception

On December 26, page one of ‘The Island’ gave a report that post-mortems conducted by a five-member team comprising four consultant judicial medical officers and a ballistic expert had revealed that the Mahara prisoners had died of gunshot injuries. This is contradictory to what State Minister, Lohan Ratwatte, Police and Prison officers have been telling. They wanted to mislead the public although they were in the know of the truth. They may have expected to get a different decision from the officers who would be involved in the post-mortems.

This brought to my mind a letter from a reader, published in ‘The Island’, just after the Mahara incident, that he hoped the JMO who would be appointed to carry out the post-mortems, would not be a student of the late Professor Ananda Samarasekera. He (the reader) and everybody who values human lives must be a pleased lot today.

K SIRIWEERA