Image: Indrananda De Silva
JVP splinter group Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) senior member Indrananda De Silva stated that he had seen Wickremesinghe firsthand when he was taken to Batalanda to take photographs of the youth captured and held at the housing complex.
Speaking to ‘The Black Box,’ De Silva recounted his eyewitness account, how he was court-martialled and jailed and how he had sent an affidavit to the then Attorney General from behind bars detailing what he had witnessed in Batalanda and at other similar places.
De Silva had joined the Sri Lanka Army in July 1987 and served as an official photographer of the Army during the 1988-’89 period. He was tasked at the time with taking photographs of the individuals in captivity prior to their disappearance.
However, what the Army was not aware of was that De Silva had joined the JVP in 1984, prior to joining the military. Throughout his tenure in the Army, he served as an inside agent of the JVP. De Silva had therefore made copies of photographs he was asked to take of the youth captured by the military and held at black sites like Batalanda and had given copies to the JVP of the individuals in captivity.
He noted that photographs of the individuals taken by him, prior to their execution, were used by military intelligence units to maintain a secret album that was used to draw networks between members of the JVP at the time.
Recounting the incident where he had seen Wickremesinghe in Batalanda, De Silva noted that he had been taken to take photographs of three youth in Batalanda and that afterwards he had been taken to a room that was being used as an office where Wickremesinghe had been in discussion with several senior military officials. This incident had taken place a few months before Wijeweera was killed in November 1989.
The next time De Silva was taken to Batalanda was in early 1990. During his second visit to Batalanda, he had seen former Minister Rajitha Senaratne walking around the housing complex talking to several military personnel.
De Silva explained that the rooms in several housing units had been partitioned with hardboard and the first time he was asked to take photographs of three individuals in Batalanda, there had been around 30 youth in the partitioned room. Some of the youths had been severely tortured to the extent of being disfigured.
Court-martialled
During his tenure as the Army photographer, De Silva had also taken photographs of detained youth in other locations in and outside Colombo.
Recounting an emotional story of the fate of 10 young women during the period, De Silva claimed that a group of military individuals who were in charge of a black site operated in a cafeteria and hotel in Thimbirigasyaya in Colombo had allegedly held 10 young women at the premises after informing the authorities that they had been killed and that the military personnel had allegedly continuously raped them.
“I was taken there to take photographs of a group of youths detained and I heard some women sobbing when I was descending the stairs. When I looked from a balcony window, I saw several women crying and when I asked them, they told me their plight. I could take their details. I then exposed the reel that I had used that day and I said I wanted to return to take fresh photographs since the reel was destroyed. I returned to the place to get their details,” De Silva said, adding that they could not be saved since they were killed shortly afterwards.
The youth accused of planning a car bomb attack on then State Minister of Defence Ranjan Wijeratne were also held at this site, according to De Silva.
One of the military officers in charge of this site later became a leading military intelligence officer who was killed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
However, after the Thimbirigasyaya incident, the military had become suspicious about De Silva since there was no other way for news about some detained youth in black sites to reach human rights defenders including lawyers.
De Silva was taken into custody as a traitor in March 1990, a few months after Wijeweera’s killing, and was also sent to Batalanda first. The only reason De Silva lived to recount the details of the dark era of 1987-’89 was because he had managed to get word out to human rights activist and lawyer Kalyananda Tiranagama about his plight, resulting in his (De Silva’s) name being taken up in Parliament.
“This was after there was international attention on Sri Lanka due to Richard de Zoysa’s killing. When a question was posed in Parliament, Ranjan Wijeratne (then State Minister of Defence), mentioned my name in the House and said that I was alive. It is because of this that I was not killed,” De Silva said.
In mid-1991, De Silva was court-martialled and was punished in 1993 with 15 years in prison. Afterwards, he was jailed in Welikada for six months and later moved to the Magazine Prison.
Affidavit to court
It was while he was in the Magazine Prison that he had written a detailed affidavit to the then Attorney General.
De Silva said that his lengthy affidavit had provided details of the alleged human rights violations that had taken place in Batalanda as well as in other similar black sites during the 1987-’89 period.
Details of these atrocities had also been sent to Opposition politicians during this period, especially to Vasudeva Nanayakkara, who had given wide publicity to the details at the time.
The affidavit was also submitted to the Batalanda Commission and it was serialised and published in newspapers of all three languages in 1996.
The threat
Meanwhile, De Silva alleged that the then Police Chief in Kelaniya Douglas Peiris had even threatened relatives of some missing persons who were in the military when they had tried to inquire about their loved ones.
“When several relatives met Dougals Peiris to ask about their missing relatives, he (Peiris) had first asked them to come in three days. When the relatives had returned after three days, they were asked to walk around the housing complex. There had been several mounds of ashes.
“When the relatives had returned to speak to Peiris, he had asked what they had seen. When the relatives had said they had seen mounds of ashes, Peiris had said: ‘If you people were not in the military uniform, you too would be returned as ashes,’” de Silva recounted.
JVP aware
It is learnt that the JVP is also aware of all these details, including firsthand accounts by the likes of De Silva and other survivors.
De Silva noted that his detailed affidavit to the Attorney General had been published in full in the JVP’s official publication, ‘Seenuwa,’ in December 1996. “The party (JVP) knows everything in detail,” he said.
He further noted that the JVP/NPP was yet to respond to the FSP’s letter to President AKD urging a fresh probe to be conducted into JVP Founder Wijeweera’s killing.
Batalanda at present
The controversial Batalanda Housing Scheme located in the Biyagama electorate on Batalanda Road is today a developed area, with many roads and houses having come up. Coincidentally, Biyagama was also Wickremesinghe’s electorate at the time.
Also, the place where the torture chambers were said to have been located today serves as the military’s Defence Services Command and Staff College.
Ready to give evidence
Meanwhile, several survivors of Batalanda as well as several individuals who had served in the Police and military at time the Batalanda torture chambers were operational have come out in public saying they are prepared to give evidence before a new commission if one is appointed.
Several of them have also recounted the gory details of what was being done in the Batalanda Housing Scheme during the period of the insurrection.
Like De Silva, one Chandrasiri Vithanage, who had served in the Police in the Kelaniya division during the said period, has told the media that he had given evidence before the previous commission and was prepared to once again go before another commission.
De Silva told ‘The Black Box’ that a youth at the time, hailing from Yudaganawa in Polonnaruwa, who had escaped from Batalanda was also prepared to give evidence.
(From the article ” Ghosts of Batalanda return to haunt RW while pendulum swings towards AKD and JVP-led Govt.” published in The Morning on 16.03/2025)