Sri Lanka: Police face outrage after man dies in custody

Sathsara Nimesh is not the first person to die under unclear circumstances while in the custody of Sri Lankan police, but his death seems to have inflamed the long-running debate on police violence in the South Asian country.

The 25-year-old from the Badulla district in eastern Sri Lanka was attending a training course for caregivers in Colombo, the island's largest city. Police detained him on April 1 for allegedly breaking into someone's home. Nimesh was then taken to the Welikada police station in the suburbs of Colombo and then to a mental health facility, where he died the following morning.

The police told his mother, Samanthi, that her son had tried to kill himself, claiming he struggled with mental issues. But Samanthi believes her son was only sent to the mental health facility to cover up the beating he took at the police station.

"I really think the police are lying," she told DW. She pointed out that her son had "a lot of wounds, scratches, and bruises everywhere on his body," adding that Nimesh may have been injured by both the police and the owners of the house he allegedly broke into.

"He had so many bruises and swelling on one leg. Who beat him?"

Authorities order second postmortem

Samanthi set out for Colombo after getting news that her son had been arrested. She said police gave her no information until suddenly asking if she was the mother of the person who had died.

While inspecting her son's body, Samanthi said she noticed he was wearing clothes that did not belong to him. She claims she found Nimesh's pants in one of the dustbins at the police station.

The family has requested Nimesh's body to be exhumed for a second postmortem, a request the authorities have since granted. The exhumation is scheduled for April 23.

'We have no professional police'

Nimesh's death sparked widespread outrage, leading to a protest demanding an end to police brutality, along with a candlelight vigil in his memory.

Senaka Perera, the family's lawyer, told DW that he had been personally involved in four cases of custodial deaths since the beginning of 2025, including Nimesh.

The lawyer also claims that one of the senior officers at the Welikada police station had already been linked to the death of a domestic worker two years ago. After 41-year-old Rajkumari died in police custody in May 2023, the local media reported that the ranking officer had been transferred. It now appears that he was reappointed to the same post at Welikada and served as the officer in charge (OIC) during Nimesh's arrest.

The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka reported a total of 24 custodial deaths and 13 deaths during police encounters between January 2020 and August 2023. DW requested updated figures from the police but did not receive a reply.

"The same thing keeps happening," Perera said, adding that the police often fabricated reasons for custodial deaths. "We have no professional police."

Police say perpetrators will be punished

Police spokesperson Frederick Udyakumara Wootler confirmed to DW that this officer had presided over both deaths. However, he said the officer was once again transferred following Nimesh's death, and two other police officers were suspended.

"We are not going to whitewash any of the police officers if they have been involved in this," Wootler told DW.

He added that "stern and stringent action" would be taken against any offenders pending the scheduled postmortem and investigation.

Decades of struggling with police brutality

The debate over police violence in Sri Lanka has been going on for many years, with a Human Rights Watch report in 2015 claiming that officers were routinely involved in the torture of people in custody.

In 2023, video clips were circulated showing Nagarasa Alex, a 25-year-old man from Sithankerni, claiming he had been blindfolded, beaten, covered with a plastic bag and refused food at the Vaddukoddai police station in northern Sri Lanka. He later died of his injuries.

Rajeev Amasuriya, president of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, told DW that police brutality was a persistent problem "for several decades" in Sri Lanka and that the association had reached out to the police to assist in training officers on rights and liberties.

"We have seen this happening over a long, long period of time, and we need to find ways and means that these custodial deaths must come to an end," he said.

Edited by: Darko Janjevic