Murder shrouded in mystery

Who was the caller at Chief Secretary's office?

Only a ruthless and a paranoid man would have done a despicable act like assassinating the Eastern Provincial Council's Chief Secretary H.M. Herath Abeyweera, while, he was attending to some official work at his office at Trincomalee last Monday.

A lone gunman who broke into the Chief Secretary's office that evening around 5.45 p.m. had repeatedly shot him five times with a pistol at point blank range and escaped.

The Secretary Abeyweera's body was found on the floor of his office when police arrived at the scene. He was hit on his head, neck and chest that fatally wounded him, police said. Police recovered five spent bullet casings at the scene of the crime.

Strangely, a man carrying a pistol had entered the Chief Secretary's room despite several other employees hanging around his office outside. Nobody can presumably say at this juncture whether it was an inside or a outside job.

It will take some time for the police to unravel the mystery that shrouds the murder. It was reported that the assassin carrying a file had simply walked into Abeyweera's room and shot him at point blank range.

This shows that despite being a top civil servant there weren't any security measurers in place to protect a top civil servant. But then again who could have simply walked into a Chief Secretary's office other than an employee or someone known to him without the procedure of being questioned by other employees on duty. This clearly shows that most civil servants pay scant attention to security through negligence.

A senior police officer told the Sunday Observer that eight suspects including employees of the Chief Secretariat have been taken in for questioning. But the police are tight lipped revealing anything to the media now as it could jeopardise the ongoing investigations.

However police suspect that some office employees may have plotted the assassination in connivance with LTTE cadres. LTTE assassinations in the past bear similar testimony.

However employees of the Chief Secretariat questioned by the police had vehemently denied seeing the assassin entering or leaving the premises. The irony is even if the employees knew of the complicity of the murder will they reveal it to police for fear of reprisals from LTTE.

Therefore information gathered from suspects have to be kept a closely guarded secret to prevent them from being killed as happened in the past. The police say the killing bears the hallmarks of LTTE involvement. In the past decades too LTTE had assassinated a number of government officials and politicians who were opposed to their ideology.

The current thinking was that Abeyweera's assassination was linked to the liberation of the Eastern province from the clutches of Tigers who held sway for three decades. The motive for the murder could be attributed to several reasons.

The prime reason being that he was the top state official after the province was liberated. Tigers may have killed him to avenge their defeat they suffered at the hands of the security forces.

A senior police officer said the Tigers may have orchestrated the killing as a deterant for other state officials who perform functions at the Eastern Province. "Their main intentions was to sabotage the administration of the Eastern Province." he said.

Meanwhile President Mahinda Rajapakse condemned the assassination as "Yet another act of savagery by the LTTE in its campaign of terror. In a condolence message the President said that Abeyweera performed a great service for the entire eastern province under most difficult conditions, as the LTTE always sought to disrupt civil administration.

"It is most regrettable that at a time when steps were being taken to restore democracy in the East, the country has lost a public officer of his calibre whose commitment to democracy was always unquestioned. He said the assassination would further strengthen the governments resolve not to give in to forces of terror but to proceed with the task of restoring freedom and democracy to the East and all of Sri Lanka.

"We regard this ultimate sacrifice in the service of the people as a great honour to the commitment of all public officers to the service of the nation." The late Herath Abeyweera (58) assumed duties as the Chief Secretary of the Eastern province in January this year. He is a father of three children. He is a senior officer in the Sri Lanka Administrative Service who served as the Divisional Secretary of the Ampara district.

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