Assassination of Lalith Athulathmudali

On April 23, 1993, Athulathmudali was scheduled to address meetings held at Borella, Aluthkade and Kirulapana. He finished addressing two other meetings and arrived at Kirulapana at 8:00 p.m. There were about 1,000 people present. As it was raining, people moved closer to the stage, some even climbing under it. Suddenly, the assassin came near Athulathmudali, pulled out a gun and shot him three times.[8] At this moment, a bodyguard of Athulathmudali named Thilak Shantha fired at the assassin and hit him on the right side of his abdomen. The assassin also shot at the bodyguard and ran away. Athulathmudali was taken to the hospital but succumbed to his wounds around 8:50 p.m.

The police came to the crime scene and cordoned the area. Subsequent search operations found nothing. On the following morning (April 24), the police found a slain body some 200m from the stage where Athulathmudali had been shot. Police found an automatic 9mm pistol with two magazines and several rounds of live ammunition, empty cartridge cases, a hand grenade, a national identity card and a little money. The Colombo Judicial Medical Officer, Dr. L.B. De Alwis, held a postmortem and recorded the cause of the death of Athulathmudali as fatal firearm wounds to the liver, heart and lungs. He identified the cause of the death of the slain Tamil youth, Appiah Balakrishnan alias Ragunathan, as cyanide poisoning. There was a non-fatal wound found on his lower back (not on the right abdomen as described by the bodyguard Thilak Shantha).

Police investigators immediately pointed their fingers at LTTE,[9] a separatist terrorist organisation which had been waging a war against the state since 1983. When Athulathmudali had been the minister of defense in the J.R. Jayawardene government, he had taken stern action against the group, sparking their anger towards him. LTTE had killed a number of parliamentarians and local body members during the period, so the police's point of view had a certain credibility. The police asserted that Ragunathan, whose body had appeared the next morning, was the gunman who had killed Athulathmudali. The fact that the Judicial Medical Officer Dr. Lalantha de Alwis, who conducted the autopsy on the body, had testified that the body smelled of potassium cyanide (which LTTEers had used over the years to commit suicide) and that he found pieces of glass in the mouth of the body, stood as strong evidence to support the police. Police determined that the youth known as Ragunathan was a LTTE activist. According to their view, LTTE had sent Ragunathan to kill Athulathmudali, and Ragunathan then bit his suicide capsule to evade capture, since he had been shot by the bodyguard.

President Ranasinghe Premadasa invited a team of Scotland Yard detectives and pathologists to further investigate the assassination.[10] They arrived in the country on April 26. During their course of investigation, on May 1, 1993, President Premadasa was killed by a suicide bombing carried out by the LTTE.

Scotland Yard reported to the then appointed D.B. Wijethunge government that they had found a minute trace of cyanide in Ragunathan's blood sample which they had taken at a second postmortem of the youth. Concluding their investigation, detective superintendent Alec Edwards of the Investigation and Crime Branch of New Scotland Yard forwarded an undated report to the government.

The circumstances regarding the death of Athulathmudali remained intensely controversial in the social and political arenas. The following facts made the official version of the assassination suspicious.

• It was reported that Rukman de Silva, a Senior Superintendent of Police, had instructed his officers not to provide police protection to the opposition political parties at their public meetings during the provincial election.
• On April 23, the Inspector of Police, Ranagala, who was the OIC of Kirulapone, sent two police officers to tape record the speeches made at the DUNF meeting.
• A police search found nothing on the night of the assassination. It was only on the following morning that Kirulapana police found the dead body of Ragunathan just 200m from the stage.
• For the second postmortem done by Dr. R.T. Shepherd on Ragunathan's body, no one had taken permission from the magistrate, which was absolutely necessary under the circumstances.
• It was found that Ragunathan had come to Colombo to go abroad. He was alone. There was no evidence to link him to the LTTE.

Those pieces of evidence, combined with the political friction between Athulathmudali and President Premadasa, made many independent investigators suspicious about an involvement of the president with this assassination. However, Premadasa repeatedly pleaded his innocence. He also made the favourite statement, "Assassinate me if you wish, but don't assassinate my character, which I have cherished from my childhood," regarding Athulathmudali's murder.[11]

In 1994, Chandrika Kumarathunga's People's Alliance government came into power, defeating the 17 year UNP rule. One of the major election promises of her 1994 presidential election campaign was to inquire the unaccounted disappearances and assassinations during UNP's rule. Thus in 1995, she appointed a 3-person presidential commission to probe the death of Athulathmudali. It was composed of justice Tissa Bandaranayake, justice Padmasiri Gunasekera and judge of the High Court, Nimal Gamini Amaratunge. Although the commission was due to submit report in 3 months time, it took more than 2 years to complete the investigation. Commission submitted its final report on October 7, 1997.

The commission found that the firearm wound on Ragunathan was caused by a shot fired at a very close range with a doctored and tampered 9 mm cartridge. For this to have happened he should’ve been in someone's captivity when he was shot.[10] This is because the bodyguard had shot the killer at a distance greater than that. Ragunathan had his wound on his lower back, not on the right side of the abdomen.

The commission also concluded that evidence gathered suggests that cyanide was administered to him forcibly, not that he bit the cyanide capsule himself. It also ruled out LTTE from the assassination plot.[11] Commission also pointed out that Ragunathan was also killed by the gang which had killed Athulathmudali.

Soththi Upali was shot dead on December 17, 1998, while returning home from the magistrate courts in Colombo, where he has been charged in connection with the assassination.[15] It was reported that two vehicles have followed the bus in which Upali was traveling from Colombo to Piliyandala. As soon as he got down at Bokundara, he was shot and then dragged into one of the vehicles and taken to a place about 4 km from Bokundara, shot again and dropped.[16] Prior to that, in late February 1998 at Borella, Nandana was killed at the presence of Upali. But he had luckily got escaped. A rival underworld gang led by Dhammika Amarasinghe, the brother of Upali's archrival Chinthaka Amarasinghe – who was killed by Upali, a few years earlier – was said to be responsible for these assassinations.[12]

When those who were implicated by the presidential commission were tried in court, it was revealed that the assassin named by the commission, Wellampitye Sudumahattaya had no wounds on the right side of his abdomen, as earlier revealed by Lalith Athulathmudali's bodyguard Thilak Shantha. Thus Shantha was recalled to the court to question him on the issue. There he confessed that he had deliberately lied to the commission and the early investigators. He said the truth was that he shot at the assassin, but the bullet never hit the assassin.[17] He said he lied to the commission and to the police at the instance of a President's Counsel who was watching the interests of Athulathmudali's family. Later Shantha was charged as an accomplice to the murder.[17]

The assassin of Lalith Athulathmudali, as implicated by commission, Janaka Priyankara Jayamanne alias Wellampitiye Sudu Mahattaya also was assassinated by rival underworld gangs at his Kolonnawa home on April 30, 2000. His wife also died in this shooting. Chandrika Kumarathunga's government was accused of giving asylum to the gangs led by Dhammika Amarasinghe who was responsible for these murders.[12] In 2005, a suspect was apprehended by Police in relation to Soththi Upali's murder. Interrogations revealed that he had been a body guard of the former Samurdi Minister S. B. Dissanayake who had been a powerful minister of Chandrika Kumarathunga's government.[18]

• Lalith Athulathmudali

• Chapter 58: Premadasa indicted
• Lalith Athulathmudali: Epitome of a pragmatic politician