Senior Superintendent of Police Roshan Amarasinghe has been appointed Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, police said on Tuesday.
Both Ada Derana and Hiru News carried the appointment in a single sentence attributed to police, with no further detail.
Neither outlet reported when the appointment takes effect, who Amarasinghe succeeds, what post he held previously, or whether the change is part of a wider round of senior police transfers. No reason was given for the vacancy.
NewsFirst says the post is acting, and names his current job
NewsFirst reported the same appointment with two details the other outlets did not carry, and one difference of substance.
It described Amarasinghe as Acting Director of the CID, and said the appointment was made on a special duty basis. Ada Derana and Hiru News both call him Director, without qualification.
NewsFirst also reported that Amarasinghe is currently serving as the Director of the Terrorism Investigation Division — which answers the question of what post he held, and indicates he moves across from the TID.
The wording matters. An acting appointment on a special duty basis is a temporary arrangement, typically pending a substantive appointment, and reads differently from the permanent directorship the other two accounts imply. No outlet said how long the arrangement runs, whether Amarasinghe retains the TID directorship alongside it, or whether a substantive Director is to be named later. LankaNewz has not established which characterisation is correct and has attributed each to the outlet that published it.
Still unreported by any of the three: when the appointment takes effect, who Amarasinghe succeeds at the CID, and why the post fell vacant.
Context
The CID directorship is one of the most consequential posts in the Sri Lanka Police. The department carries the country’s most sensitive investigations, and its work runs through a large share of the cases currently before the courts — among them the Airbus procurement bribery case, in which a magistrate ordered the CID to make arrests, and the investigation into the death of a model at a businessman’s residence that police are treating as suspicious.
The appointment comes during a period of visible activity across the police and the Bribery Commission. Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala has been pressing a “follow the money” approach to organised crime, and has said the government will step in to protect officers acting properly while ruling out any tolerance for bribery.
The move from the TID to the CID also comes with the Terrorism Investigation Division’s own workload under scrutiny, and no outlet has reported who takes over there.
LankaNewz will update this report if police release further detail on the appointment.
