\n<\/p>\n
The move comes after a commission found Deshabandu Tennakoon guilty of gross abuse of power.<\/em><\/p>\n Sri Lanka\u2019s Parliament has voted to fire the country\u2019s police chief for misconduct and gross abuse of power in the island\u2019s first impeachment of an inspector general.<\/p>\n Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to sack Deshabandu Tennakoon, who was accused of sending a team of armed officers on a botched raid in 2023 in Weligama that triggered a gun battle with a separate police unit, leading to the death of an officer.<\/p>\n No one opposed his removal while one member abstained. The decision came after a parliament-appointed committee opened an inquiry into the allegations against Tennakoon and last month released a report that found him guilty of 19 charges related to misconduct and abuse of power.<\/p>\n The committee found that he had \u201cspearheaded the questionable, illegal act of shooting\u201d at the W15 hotel in Weligama, where a local police unit opened fire on a team sent by Tennakoon to intimidate the hotel\u2019s owner.<\/p>\n A state prosecutor told the committee that the police chief, who headed a force of 85,000 officers, was running a \u201ccriminal network\u201d and was unfit to serve, even at the lowest ranks.<\/p>\n There has been no reaction from Tennakoon since the impeachment process was initiated last month. The 54-year-old is the first head of police in the island\u2019s history to be dismissed.<\/p>\n He was appointed police chief in 2023 by then-President Ranil Wickremesinghe despite protests from opposition lawmakers and civil rights activists who said he was not fit for the post.<\/p>\n Before his appointment, Sri Lanka\u2019s highest court had ruled that he tortured a suspect in custody by rubbing menthol balm on his genitals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The move comes after a commission found Deshabandu Tennakoon guilty of gross abuse of power. Sri Lanka\u2019s Parliament has voted to fire the country\u2019s police chief for misconduct and gross abuse of power in the island\u2019s first impeachment of an inspector general. Lawmakers on Tuesday voted to sack Deshabandu Tennakoon, who was accused of sending<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[689,3539,77,7888,7887,150,1321,1551,7886,840],"class_list":{"0":"post-14228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-chief","9":"tag-corruption","10":"tag-fire","11":"tag-impeached","12":"tag-lanka","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-parliament","15":"tag-police","16":"tag-sri","17":"tag-votes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}