The Batalanda Torture Camp was a notorious site in Sri Lanka during the 1980s which became infamous as a place of torture. The location remains a topic of discussion even today due to allegations of its connection to former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was a minister and Member of Parliament for the area at the time. However, the lack of a formal investigation and the politicization of inquiries have left the matter unresolved.
Investigative journalist Nandana Weeraratne, a former BBC Sinhala service journalist, strongly believes that a detention camp operated at this site. In 2023, he published a book titled “We Set Fire to Batalanda” detailing the events. Weeraratne asserts that among the many detention camps that existed during the 1989 JVP insurrection, Batalanda was symbolically significant because of its alleged connection to Ranil Wickremesinghe, who was then the Minister of Industries and a member of a prominent political family. Weeraratne explained that his intention in documenting this history was driven by Wickremesinghe’s potential future role as a state leader. Wickremesinghe later served as Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister and held the presidency from 2022 to 2024.
In 1995, Weeraratne raised questions in an article published in the Ravaya newspaper, asking whether Wickremesinghe resided in the Batalanda housing complex and whether he was aware that torture chambers operated there. Following these revelations, then-President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga instructed Weeraratne to lodge a complaint with the Special Police Division, leading to the initiation of an investigation into the Batalanda detention camp and the appointment of a Presidential Commission of Inquiry.
On February 26, 1995, the Ravaya newspaper published a list of residents in the Batalanda housing complex, which is detailed on page 209 of “We Set Fire to Batalanda.” The book states that Wickremesinghe used two houses, A 2/1 and A 2/2, in the complex between 1988 and 1994, leaving after the 1994 election defeat. Weeraratne alleges that a torture chamber was operated in a house numbered A 1/8, located 100 meters from Wickremesinghe’s residence (We Set Fire to Batalanda, p. 211).
The housing complex was originally established in 1979 for local and foreign engineers employed at a fertilizer factory that produced urea using naphtha from the Sapugaskanda oil refinery. The factory was later shut down due to the profitability of fertilizer imports, and the complex reportedly now houses a military training school.
According to journalist C.J. Amarathunga, who visited Batalanda housing scheme in that time says that the housing complex was a well-organized residential complex in which the houses located somewhat remotely. He was a former engineering student and his engineer friends lived in this housing complex. Anti-JVP (People’s Liberation Front) student union and political group Independent Student Union also had been given safehouses there, Amarathunga pointed out. He reported about this place in the Yukthiya newspaper in the 1990s.
Nandana Weeraratne pointed out that some houses in the complex were used by the military and police, while others were allocated to pro-government individuals, including criminals who collaborated with the authorities. He confirmed that certain houses were used as torture chambers.
Weeraratne’s book (pages 34-37) reveals that his initial information about the detention camp came in 1993 from a former soldier he met in the village of Vihara Halmillawa, Anuradhapura.
The Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Batalanda camp saw Wickremesinghe testify, stating that while he resided in the housing complex, he was unaware of the existence of a torture chamber. The commission also received testimonies from individuals who claimed to have been tortured at the site.
While the commission recommended action against those responsible for the detention camp, it did not call for criminal prosecutions.
The Douglas Peiris Connection
The name of Douglas Peiris, a police officer, is also associated with the Batalanda detention camp. Peiris and others were implicated in the 1989 abduction of a 16-year-old boy who was taken to the camp and subsequently killed. In 2009, the Gampaha High Court found Peiris and his accomplices guilty. On July 25, 2024, the Court of Appeal upheld the sentence, ordering that Peiris serve five years of rigorous imprisonment. Of the five police officers who appealed against the 2009 ruling, only one, Baddegama Ranjith Jayasekara, was acquitted, while the judgment against Peiris and others remained unchanged.
The Court of Appeal ruling, delivered by Justices Menaka Wijesundara and Vikum A. Kaluarachchi, spans 37 pages and extensively discusses the evidence presented at the High Court.
