Broken Ribs, an Open Verdict and a Circular Nobody Followed: Custody Deaths Are the Police Reform Test This Government Keeps Failing

In the early hours of 25 October 2026, Homagama Police arrested a 29-year-old man at Pitipana Junction. He was a father of two from Kiriwaththuduwa, named in news reports as Ishara Harshakumara (the spelling varies between outlets). According to Onlanka, police said they had found 490 milligrams of crystal methamphetamine, known locally as ice. By the end of that day he was dead.

The police account, as reported by Ada Derana, was that he fell suddenly ill after being brought to the station, was taken to Homagama Base Hospital and later died. His family told a very different story. According to the Tamil Guardian, relatives said that when they saw him he could not walk, had to be carried, and was bleeding. They alleged that he had been beaten. A post-mortem examination by a Judicial Medical Officer at the Colombo South Teaching Hospital in Kalubowila returned an open verdict, Ada Derana reported on 27 October, meaning the cause of death was not settled.

Today, 12 November, is the date to which the Homagama Magistrate’s Court remanded the first police officer arrested over the death. It is a good moment to ask what the past three weeks have shown, not only about one police station, but about whether the National People’s Power government is able to stop deaths in police hands, something successive governments have promised and failed to do.

What the authorities have done

To be fair to the government, the response to the Homagama death was faster than in many past cases. On 26 October, the Daily Mirror reported that the Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs, Ananda Wijepala, had instructed the Inspector General of Police, Priyantha Weerasuriya, to carry out a prompt and independent investigation, and to take legal action based on the post-mortem findings. The Minister said, according to the same report, that protecting the safety and dignity of people in custody was a basic duty of the police.

Ada Derana reported that three officers, two Sub-Inspectors and a constable, were suspended with effect from 26 October. On 28 October, officers of the Western Province South Divisional Crime Investigation unit arrested the interdicted officer-in-charge of the Homagama crimes division, a 32-year-old from Horana. The Homagama Magistrate’s Court remanded him until 12 November, according to both Ada Derana and Sri Lanka Mirror. Onlanka reported that by 30 October investigators had recorded statements from 17 people, nine of them police officers.

At a press briefing on 29 October, the police spokesman, ASP F. U. Wootler, said that no officer would receive special protection, the Tamil Guardian reported. The Sunday Times reported on 1 November that the Senior Deputy Inspector General for the Western Range, Sanjeewa Madawatta, had acknowledged that arrest procedures, including the recording of arrest information, had not been followed, and that he could not rule out that the young man had been assaulted. According to the same newspaper, a medical report found three broken ribs and internal bleeding in the brain.

These are serious admissions from a senior police officer, and they deserve credit. They are also an indictment. If the most basic step in any arrest, writing down who was arrested, when and why, was skipped, then the safeguards that exist on paper failed at the very first point.

The rules that already exist

The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka opened an investigation on its own motion after media reports, and its 28 October statement is the most important document in this case. The Commission said it had reviewed 49 deaths in police custody and 30 deaths in confrontations with police after arrest between January 2020 and 31 March 2025. That is 79 deaths in a little over five years in which the state had a person under its control.

The Commission also said it had drawn up guidelines on the treatment of suspects in custody after discussions with the Inspector General of Police, and that the IGP had sent them to every police station by circular. Its preliminary findings, the Commission said, suggested that the Homagama officers had not followed those guidelines. It summoned the officers to appear before it on 29 October and said it would obtain the post-mortem report and issue a final decision when its inquiry was complete.

Nimal Punchihewa, a lawyer who has served as a Human Rights Commissioner, told the Sunday Times that the Police Ordinance and IGP circulars on the treatment of people in custody are not implemented or followed up, and that the Commission’s own guidelines are ignored. That is the heart of the matter. Sri Lanka does not lack rules. It lacks consequences for breaking them.

The Bar Association of Sri Lanka said in a statement, reported by the Sunday Times, that a death in custody is a matter of grave concern and that the state has a duty it cannot hand to anyone else to protect people it holds. The Bar Association also called for an impartial investigation, according to the Tamil Guardian. The dispute that followed is itself revealing. The Morning reported that the police spokesman rejected a statement the Bar Association had attributed to him about a sudden medical emergency, saying he had never made it. Whatever the truth of that exchange, the first public account from police, that the young man simply fell ill, did not survive contact with the medical evidence.

Not one case, but a pattern

Homagama was not the only death in the same week. News 1st reported on 1 November that the Human Rights Commission had begun investigating the death of a 41-year-old man who had been held at the Kobeigane police station. According to the police spokesman, as reported by News 1st, villagers had accused the man of theft, tied him to a tree and beaten him. Police then took him to the station and did not admit him to hospital. He was later admitted and died the following day. Two sergeants and a constable were suspended. The Sunday Times reported that the suspensions related to wrong information recorded about the case. Reports differ on how many villagers were arrested.

The Kobeigane case raises a different but related question. The police did not cause the beating, on their own account. But when the state takes custody of an injured person, it takes responsibility for that person’s life. Holding a badly beaten man in a cell instead of taking him straight to hospital is a failure of the duty of care, whoever threw the punches.

The Tamil Guardian noted that deaths in custody have repeatedly involved Tamil detainees in the North and East, citing the deaths of Nagarasa Alex in 2023 and others in Valvettithurai and Batticaloa. For Tamil families, and for the overseas Sri Lankans and human rights bodies who follow these cases, this is not a new story. It is one of the reasons international confidence in Sri Lanka’s domestic accountability mechanisms remains low.

A promise made eighteen months ago

This government has been here before. In April 2025, after the death of a suspect named Sathsara Nimesh, The Morning reported that the police spokesman had said CCTV cameras would be installed in all 604 police stations. The same report said Minister Wijepala had acknowledged that cameras alone would not change police culture. He was right about that. But eighteen months later, the public still has no clear report on how many stations have working cameras in their cells, who keeps the footage, and whether it has been secured in the Homagama case.

The Sunday Times also recalled that the NPP manifesto promised reform of the police. That promise was one of the reasons many voters, including many who had been on the receiving end of police abuse, supported the party in 2024. Voters were entitled to expect that a government elected on a promise of clean, accountable institutions would make custody deaths rare and the punishment for them certain.

The record so far is mixed. Individual officers are suspended and occasionally arrested, which is more than has happened in some past cases. But suspensions are not convictions. Lanka Witness is not aware of any public figure showing how many of the 79 custody and encounter deaths the Human Rights Commission reviewed have led to a successful prosecution. If the government has that figure, it should publish it. If it does not, that is itself a finding.

The security bills make this more urgent

These deaths come at the same moment the government is pressing ahead with new security laws that would give police more power to hold people for longer. As Lanka Witness has reported, rights groups and United Nations experts have raised concerns about detention powers in the proposed organised crime law, and the government has promised amendments. A police service that cannot follow its own rules on recording an arrest is not ready to be trusted with longer detention without charge.

That is not an argument against fighting drug crime or organised crime. It is an argument that the safeguards must come first. Every extension of police power should be matched by a stronger guarantee that people in custody are seen by a doctor, that their families and lawyers are told where they are, and that what happens in a cell is recorded and preserved.

What should happen now

Lawyers interviewed by the Sunday Times offered practical ideas. Senior lawyer Mohan Seneviratne suggested that the Human Rights Commission should be empowered to make surprise visits to police stations. Former Bar Association president U. R. De Silva PC pointed out that families can file fundamental rights cases and should inform the Commission within 30 days of an arrest. Lanka Witness would add five steps.

First, the government should publish, station by station, how many police cells have working CCTV, and require that footage be kept for at least 90 days and handed to the magistrate in every custody death. Second, every person arrested should be examined by a doctor on arrival at a police station, with the record available to their lawyer. Third, the Human Rights Commission’s custody guidelines should be turned into regulations with clear disciplinary penalties, not left as a circular. Fourth, every custody death should be investigated by a body outside the police chain of command, with the Attorney General deciding on charges within a fixed time. Fifth, the government should publish an annual report on custody deaths and their outcomes.

None of this requires the government to admit that it is to blame for the actions of individual officers. It requires it to show that it understands the difference between reacting to a scandal and preventing the next one.