The Committee appointed to investigate the unruly behaviour of Members of Parliament, during the Constitutional crisis, has sought the advice of the Attorney General (AG).
Deputy Speaker Ananda Kumarasiri told the Sunday Observer yesterday that they were expecting a mechanism for a speedy conclusion of this investigation. A reply from the AG’s Department is expected by Thursday, January 3, 2019. When all reports are finalised, steps will be taken to forward them to the Attorney General through the Speaker. “Then the AG can take steps accordingly,” he said. The MPs purported to have committed any offences will be dealt with by the court. We hope to take it to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
“Statements have been obtained from over 100 officers. There are over 400 more officials to take statements from, hence we need to see how practical this would be. It is necessary to take timely action,” he said.
He told the Sunday Observer that of the six members appointed to the Committee MPs Chamal Rajapaksa and Chandrasiri Gajadeera had not attended the Committee meetings, and therefore, the remaining members are continuing with the work.
“We have now perused several unedited video footage obtained from different sources and prepared a document stating the incidents and who took charge of the events and what each MP had done,” the Deputy Speaker said.
Since the Committee cannot peruse each and every document and videos, several police officers have been appointed to study it.
They have also been entrusted to study video footage obtained from private media institutions.
“We believe that they would have captured the incident from different angles to those in the Chamber,” he said.
Several steps have been taken to ensure that the material is properly studied and cross-checked to ensure that nothing is amiss.
Action will be taken against those who had committed an offence, irrespective of them being in the Government or the Opposition,” the Deputy Speaker said.
Investigations into the incident relating to offences, damaging public property and other criminal offences are carried out by the Criminal Investigation Department. According to AG’s Department sources, the CID has been asked to obtain únedited video footage’ and statements from every person who was in the House on November 14 and 15 including the Sergeant at Arms and the Deputy Sergeant at Arms.
“We hope to carry out the investigations objectively,” he said.