Pages

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Moratuwa cops erase tapes of peope'd protest

The Moratuwa police forced a video cameraman from a private television station to erase a video recording of a protest staged outside the police station this afternoon.The video cameraman was recording the protest by relatives of a suspect who died while in police custody early this morning.

The suspect was among those arrested for the murder of a policeman in Maratuwa on Sunday.

When the video cameraman was taking visuals of the relatives of the suspect protesting outside the Moratuwa police station this afternoon some officers had surrounded the video cameraman and took him into the police station.

There he was threatened and forced to delete the video recording taken outside, the video cameraman told The Sunday Leader.

He said that his mobile phone was also confiscated at the time. After his release he contacted the police media spokesman SSP Maxi Proctor who in turn had told him to lodge a complaint over the incident.

On Sunday, a policeman attached to the Moratuwa police station who had attempted to mediate in a dispute between two groups was stabbed to death.

The police yesterday said they had arrested four suspects over the killing. The suspects were taken by boat along a river to locate hidden weapons when one suspect had jumped off the boat and committed suicide, the police had claimed.

Relatives of the suspect who died while in police custody however raised suspicion over the death and protested outside the Moratuwa police station today.
SL