Marked drop in police assault cases

by Shanika SRIYANANDA

The number of police assault cases reported to the Attorney General's (AG) Department has dropped significantly, Solicitor General Palitha Fernando said. Rarely a person now complains about police assaults.

A few years ago there was a large number of complaints about police brutality. We now see a significant reduction in that", he told the Sunday Observer.

Fernando attributed this to the steps taken by the Police Department to educate its officers on human rights.

"The era where a person who steps into a police station to lodge a complaint would be assaulted or not is now over", he said.

According to the Solicitor General, the other factor that helped check police brutality was the action taken by the AG's Department to prosecute police officers who tortured people.The propaganda campaign carried out to educate the police had helped restore human rights considerably.