The Supreme Court yesterday (27) ruled that former Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP) Chandana Wickramaratne and the National Police Commission had violated the fundamental rights of a group of Senior Superintendents of Police (SSPs).
The ruling was delivered unanimously by a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena and Justices Mahinda Samayawardhena and Sampath K.B. Wijeratne, following lengthy hearings into several fundamental rights petitions filed by a large number of SSPs.
The petitions stemmed from a series of controversial promotions implemented shortly after the then Government of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa assumed office in January 2020.
On 27 January 2020, then Acting IGP Wickramaratne and the National Police Commission issued Police Special Message No. 1059, granting three officers backdated promotions spanning several years.
The three officers were former Terrorism Investigation Division Director Prasanna Alwis, Colombo South Division Superintendent of Police Anuruddha Bandaranayake, and former Colombo Central Division Superintendent of Police Manoj Ranagala.
Under the order, their appointments as Assistant Superintendents of Police, originally granted in 2013, were backdated to 2008; their promotions to Superintendent of Police were backdated to 2014; and their appointments as SSPs were backdated to 2018, effectively elevating them in the seniority list.
Before court, the National Police Commission argued through affidavits that the promotions had been granted pursuant to the Supreme Court judgment in case SC/FR 125/2009.
However, after calling for and examining the earlier case records, the present Supreme Court found that the previous judgment had contained no order directing that the officers be granted retrospective promotions.
Instead, the earlier case had merely recorded that the officers had been promoted in 2014 and closed the matter.
The Supreme Court found that the former Acting IGP and the Police Commission had relied on inaccurate claims to justify the promotions.
The judgment noted that a key consequence of the exercise was the elevation of Prasanna Alwis to the rank of SSP, enabling his appointment as Director of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
Following the Rajapaksa Government’s assumption of office in November 2019, then CID Director Shani Abeysekara had been removed from the post without an inquiry and reassigned as a personal assistant to a Deputy Inspector General of Police.
The petitions alleged that the subsequent promotions were used to make Prasanna Alwis eligible for appointment as CID Director.
After considering all submissions, the Supreme Court ordered that the disputed orders and retrospective promotions issued by former Acting IGP Wickramaratne and the National Police Commission be suspended in their entirety.
The court further held that granting retrospective promotions without citing any reasonable basis had caused serious prejudice to other officers and violated the fundamental rights of the petitioner SSPs.
