tamilweek.com/news-features

by V. Vamadevan, D I G (Retired)

Some aspects of the night of the insurrection of 1971 have gone unrecorded and the public are entitled to know all the facts of the behind the scene activities that went on to avert, what would have been much worse, than what resulted.

On the night of 4/5th of April 1971 the Wellawaya Police station had been attacked by a mix up of the dates by the local JVP leader and was repulsed with some casualties. The fact that the entire country’s Police stations were to be attacked on a particular date was not known, at that time. The attack on Wellawaya Police Station was thought to be an isolated incident, but intelligence sleuths were busy taking stock of the situation. One such body investigating was the special unit operating under Inspector K. S. de Silva from Borella Police Station.

I was attached to Police Head Quarters as supernumerary, having just returned from UK and Europe after a six month study tour. This included a three-month course at the Police College, UK, attachments at Scotland Yard, Netherlands Police, German Police and the Gendarmes in France. I was sharing an office room with Cyril Herath, a colleague of mine at the University, and later batch-mate as Police Probationary ASP trainees. Subsequently he was IGP. Clement Alles was the other officer sharing the room with us.

Head Quarters was abuzz with the Wellawaya incident and the IGP at the time, Mr. Stanley Senanayake was shuttling between his office and Temple Trees for conferences assessing the situation. At the end of the day Cyril and I decided, on our own volition, to stay back in the IG’s office and monitor the messages coming to Head Quarters. Both of us were contemporaries in the Special Branch earlier under Mr. Ana Seneviratne and we had a good understanding of the developments and could sense that things were dicey and the situation island wide needed to be carefully monitored.

By 10 p.m. things were looking hazardous, Borella Police reported that hand bombs and other contraptions turned up in the course of searches at Wanathamulla. Their information was that these were part of the preparations to attack the Welikade Jail. At this turn of events Cyril and I started giving messages to Police stations to step up their defenses. I also took a call to Mr. Sundaralingam, who was SP Jaffna, at the time, and found he was on duty at a public meeting. I told the officer answering the phone of the developments and to ask his SP to ring me back immediately. Within a matter of minutes Sunda called me and I told him of the plan to attack Welikade Jail and an attempt to attack the Jaffna Jail could be anticipated since Wijeyaweera was detained in Jaffna. Incidentally, as it turned out, my phone call to Sunda at Jaffna was the last call they had, the lines went dead after that. Just then Mr. Stanley Senanayke returned from Temple Trees and was glad to see that Cyril and I had set up an operation room of sorts on our own and were monitoring developments and taking action to alert all Police stations.

While all this was going on one Dayananda burst into the IG’s room closely followed by Insp. K. S. de Silva. Dayananda’s intention was to fall at the IG’s feet, but I mistook it as an attempt on the IG’s life and rushed to intercept him. But he was wailing out that all Police stations were going to be attacked simultaneously at 11 p.m. that night. He was debriefed and Mr. Senanayake decided to take him to Temple trees. We asked IG, just before he left, whether we had his permission to originate messages, as from him, to take whatever action we thought was essential. He readily said “go ahead and hold the Fort till I come back”.

Cyril and I decided that it would be a good idea to enforce an unofficial curfew in Colombo. I rang Insp. Sivapatham, who was in-charge that night at Police Emergency, to send out all Radio cars and enforce an unofficial; curfew in Colombo. To enforce an emergency, only the Governor-General can do so by Government Gazette. But we took it upon ourselves to do what was best irrespective of consequences. This decision saved a big calamity, as we will soon see. On this message all radio cars fanned out and announced by loud hailer that a curfew was in force and ordered all people to return to their homes and remain indoors. Inspector Joe David who was working at Borella Police Station went to Eros cinema and told the Manager to stop the show and asked all the patrons to vacate the cinema and go home.

Now we come to the more sensational part. In the cinema was a group of JVPers detailed to kill time at the cinema armed with bombs, gal-kattas and Molotov cocktails and at ‘D’ hour proceed to Rosmead Place and take the Prime Minister, Mrs. Srimavo Bandaranaike hostage dead or alive. This unforeseen development, not in their brief, took them by complete surprise and caused them to panic and abandon their mission and return home leaving behind the hand bombs. The Police who searched the cinema subsequently found the bombs. Their inquires revealed their plan was to proceed to Rosmead Placed and put into effect the plan to capture the Prime Minister dead or alive.

The scene now shifts to Jaffna. Sunda, who was SP in charge of the whole of NP, on being alerted of the situation, as mentioned earlier, rang the alarm bell and got all his men to duty, armed them and got all vulnerable points guarded. Sunda is a familiar officer to many and among his laurels was the fact that he was the longest serving Police officer in the history of Interpol, namely 16 years. He had a Contingency plan, which he put into effect. He also alerted Vavuniya, Mulaithivu and Mannar, the Army Camp at Pallai and Naval base at Karainagar. His men took up positions among others at the entrance to the Jaffna Fort where Wiyeyaweera was held. Barely had he done this when two buses arrived outside the Fort jail with cadres armed with crude hand bombs, shot guns and pistols ready to break into the jail to rescue Wijeyaweera. The Police who were ready by then had a shoot out and saved the day and took 80 insurgents into custody.

In Elephant Pass, the next night (i.e.: the 6th) a renegade Naval group of ratings planned to join the JVPers and destroy the Electric Power Station at Chunnakam and proceed to Temple Trees which was guarded by the Navy. The Police led by ASP Chandra Mendis in a shoot out killed four Navy Ratings including Able Seaman Tilakaratne and saved the situation and thwarted their plan.

It was the alert sent to Police stations that helped many of the stations to hold out and thwart the JVP effort to take over the stations. It was mainly stations that did not get the messages Cyril and I sent that were unprepared and fell to the rebels. Rajangane was one such station. Unlike today all Police stations were not on radio communication and Cyril and I had to take trunk calls one by one to several of the remote stations. If not for these messages many more Police stations would have fallen with much more loss of life.

The turn of events if the Prime Minister was taken hostage, dead or alive, and if Wijeyaweera was rescued, as was planed, the history of the country would have been quite different and contemporary history better imagined than said. [Island.lk]