Announcements

SLPI deplores manner of editor’s arrest

The Sri Lanka Press Institute lodges its strong protest at the manner in which Mr. N. Vidyatharan, Editor of the Sudar Oli newspaper, was arrested on Thursday morning at a funeral parlour in Mount Lavinia from which he was dragged out by some men in police uniform and others in civvies who bundled him into a white van and drove him away.

If the editor was needed by police for purposes of an investigation, he or indeed any other citizen, should have been told why he was required, shown the Magistrate’s warrant permitting the arrest and taken away without the rough housing that was evident. The methods used were, to say the least, deplorable.

We do not know whether Mr. Vidyatharan was taken away for good reason or bad and without that knowledge will not comment on that matter. But the fact that the police spokesman first told the media that he had been abducted by a group of gunmen and driven off in a white van, and the story later changed to say that he was arrested by the Colombo Crimes Bureau, implies either an attempted cover-up in the first instance or that the left hand of the police does not know what the right hand is doing.

Eye witnesses at the funeral parlour where the editor was standing by his publisher who was to later perform the obsequies at a relative’s funeral said that three men in police uniform tried to take the editor away and when this was resisted by Vidyatharan and others present, three others in civilian dress came out and dragged Mr. Vidyatharan along the floor, bundled him into the white van and then drove him away.

SLPI strongly asserts that the manner of the arrest and the use of a white van for this purpose is most deplorable.