NEGOMBO, Sri Lanka — A Tamil police officer attached to the Negombo Police Station has been removed from the force over social media posts said to be supportive of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to the group that campaigned for action against him.
The group, The Sri COM, said this week that the officer, Jenistran Coonghe, was dismissed after an investigation. Sri Lanka Police has made no public announcement of any dismissal, and Jaffna Monitor could not independently verify the group’s account.
The campaign began on June 10, when Srimal, a co-founder and administrator of The Sri COM who uses only one name publicly, posted screenshots he said were taken from Coonghe’s social media accounts. The group said some of the material expressed support for the LTTE and that other posts accused the Sri Lankan military of killing Tamils.
The Sri COM also published photographs it said showed Coonghe in police uniform, and said he had recently been posted to the Negombo Police Station.
The June post said uniform photographs disappeared from Coonghe’s Facebook account after he was tagged in posts drawing attention to the allegations, while similar images remained on Instagram. Why the accounts changed is not known.
The group asked the Inspector General of Police and the Criminal Investigation Department to open an inquiry, arguing that a serving officer should not circulate material supporting a proscribed organisation or content capable of inflaming ethnic tensions. It later told followers to email complaints to the police chief.
In an update this week, The Sri COM said those complaints triggered an official investigation that ended in Coonghe’s removal from service. It thanked participants in the email campaign and called the outcome a victory for public safety.
Little about the reported dismissal is documented. The group’s announcement included no disciplinary order or other official record of the action, and did not say which police regulations or laws Coonghe was found to have broken.
Nor is it clear whether Coonghe wrote the posts or shared them from other accounts, what investigators concluded about them, or whether he was given a chance to answer the allegations.
Coonghe could not be reached for comment. Jaffna Monitor also sought comment from Sri Lanka Police but had not received a response by the time of publication.
