With 29 dead and 101 injured this week, the Negombo prison riot is now the second deadliest case of prison violence in Sri Lankan history.
The trouble began last Sunday, a day before the riot. Inmates clashed when a veteran prisoner, Suresh Pushpakumara, killed two fellow prisoners for snitching on him, a confidant of Pushpakumara told The Examiner. Thirty nine others were injured in the fracas.
Prison officers managed to control the situation by evening, said Prasad Kumara, the acting commissioner-general of prisons, who visited the prison on Sunday and negotiated with prisoners. “On Sunday afternoon, I spoke to all the inmates inside the prison using a megaphone. By that time, they were very willing to listen to my orders and return to their wards [cells holding many prisoners]. I told them they could come to us with their problems.”
He also sent men to Negombo from other prisons, including Welikada and Mahara. Police were called in, along with the STF. They surrounded the prison, but didn’t go in.
The situation wasn’t yet fully under control. That evening, some inmates raided the pharmacy and took pills, said Kumara. Women inmates in the neighbouring prison also protested, and Kumara claimed they had also taken pills male inmates had thrown over to them.
Prisoners from some wards didn’t return to their wards, and weren’t locked up.
Monday was both a court day and a visitation day, with families waiting outside from Sunday night. Having learnt of the deaths the day before, they were also worried. The Prisons Department didn’t give them clear information on who had died. To avoid further aggravation, prison officers decided to go ahead with the visitation, said Kumara.
But by 10am a riot had broken out. It’s unclear what exactly triggered the riot. Near the inner metal gate, prisoners cornered jailers, who were armed with guns, and beat them up with furniture and stones. Eight are now dead.
Prisoners likely got a hold of two guns then, said Harshana Nanayakkara, the justice minister.
Outside, over 50 STF, and some army and police officers were talking to the prisoners through the gate. A few of those who were beaten up, including some guards, were brought out through the gate. A prison officer wearing an STF helmet and prison uniform started to shoot into the prison through the peephole. At the funerals for the dead officers, prison officers, who were standing on the turrets during the riot, told Nanayakkara they didn’t open fire.
Soon after, the STF, accompanied by the police, stormed through the gate and took over the prison.
Samantha de Silva, the STF’s commandant, said “only two canisters of tear gas” were used. He maintains that the STF didn’t shoot when they stormed the prison, and the STF didn’t open fire during the operation.
Post-mortems find that 14 died of gunshot wounds and nine of blunt force trauma. The prison officers all died of blunt force trauma. The final report is still not out.
Chain of command
A.C. Gajanayake, the prisons commissioner in charge of prison operations, intelligence, and security, said the department is investigating the incident, including the shootings by the prison officers. He told The Examiner that officers had used “minimum force of firearms” to control the situation.
All the killed jailers were from Colombo, brought when tensions were rising on Sunday, confirmed Gajanayake. Many were seen wearing track suits and t-shirts with “SPEAT Force” written on them. SPEAT stands for Sri Lanka Prisons Emergency Action and Tactical Force, a unit within the department, created in 2022 to thwart corruption and misconduct in prisons. The unit was raised from former soldiers.
At least seven of the killed prison officers belonged to SPEAT, Daily News also reported.
Gajanayake denied that the killed jailers were from SPEAT saying “they were just wearing those t-shirts”. Videos from the officers’ funeral shows officers wearing SPEAT t-shirts crying. Death notices also show that at least one was from SPEAT.
