COLOMBO: Sri Lankan police were searching for their chief on Sunday after a court order for his arrest was issued over the killing of an officer during a botched raid, an official said.
Inspector-General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon has been missing since a magistrate in the island’s south ordered his arrest on Friday, following allegations that he had ordered the raid on Dec. 31, 2023.
“We went to his home to carry out the arrest warrant but he had gone into hiding, leaving behind his bodyguards,” a senior officer said.
He said the court had also imposed a foreign travel ban on Tennakoon, 53, to stop him from leaving the island.
Tennakoon ordered a unit from Colombo to search a hotel in Weligama, a resort town about 150 kilometers south of the capital, for illegal drugs.
Local police, unaware of the undercover operation, confronted the unit from the capital, sparking a gunbattle in which one officer was killed and another critically wounded. No drugs were found at the hotel.
Tennakoon was controversially named as police chief in November 2023 but his appointment was challenged in the Supreme Court, which suspended him in July pending the completion of a hearing.
He was given the top job despite the highest court finding in a separate case that he had tortured a suspect.
The court had ordered Tennakoon to pay half a million rupees ($1,600) to the victim but the government at the time ignored judicial orders to take disciplinary action against him.
Separately, Sri Lanka’s leftist president recently received a boost from Washington, with the International Monetary Fund greenlighting a roughly $330 million payout under an existing loan agreement.
The IMF board approved the latest review of an existing four-year loan agreement, noting in a statement that Sri Lanka’s program performance “has been strong,” and that almost all quantitative targets had been met.
The board’s approval gives Sri Lanka “immediate access” to around $334 million to support its economic policies and reform program, the IMF said, and follows an earlier staff level agreement struck with the Sri Lankan authorities.
“Reforms in Sri Lanka are bearing fruit and the economic recovery has been remarkable,” IMF deputy managing director Kenji Okamura said in a statement.
