Lasantha’s body to be exhumed

By Isuri Kaviratne

Over seven years after the assassination, the slain Sunday Leader editor Lasantha Wickrematunga’s body will be exhumed on September 27, on the orders of the Mount Lavinia Magistrate Mohamed Saafdeen.

The order was made following a request by the CID to exhume the body, as they informed court that a second postmortem was needed to carry out proper forensic investigations into the case.

The first postmortem, conducted soon after Wickrematunga’s death, the CID said, did not provide sufficient information to proceed with the investigation. Both, the Mount Lavinia and Mirihana police conducted investigations into the murder but no suspect was arrested until the CID arrested an officer attached to Army Intelligence as a suspect, in mid-July this year, and questioned two former IGPs for allegedly burying the investigation. The CID also found an eyewitness for the case. Wickrematunga was 51 when he was killed near Attidiya Malalar School by a group of eight men on four motorbikes, on the morning of January 8, 2009, as he drove to work. It was reported, the men approached the car, forced it to the side of the road, beat him with metal rods before shooting and fleeing. Wickrematunga was rushed to the Kalubowila Teaching Hospital, and, after a three hour surgery, died due to head injuries.

In his last editorial, aptly titled ‘And then they came for me’, Wickrematunga wrote; “No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces, and, in Sri Lanka, journalism” analyzing media freedom in the country, and how journalists pay the ultimate price for exposing those in power.

Wickrematunge’s grave was already provided with police protection and police sources said, the body will be exhumed under tight security.