Sunday Times 2
Hand grenade in Parliament
View(s):Last week, the Sunday Times carried a chapter from Prof. Ravindra Fernando’s soon-to-be released book “Explosion in the Parliament of Sri Lanka”, capturing in detail the bomb attack on UNP parliamentarians during the height of the 1987 JVP insurrection. This week, we publish a chapter titled “Hand Grenade in Parliament” from former Parliament Secretary General Nihal Seneviratne’s book “A Clerk Reminisces”. The book is available at Vijitha Yapa Bookshop.
The illustration that accompanied a Sunday Times article on the parliament bomb blast
President J.R. Jayewardene had only a few days before on July 29, 1987 signed the controversial Indo-Lanka Pact with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India. Most observers take the view that Jayewardene, fighting a JVP insurrection in the South and the LTTE insurgency in the North, had little option but to sign an agreement he was railroaded into on India’s terms. The LTTE was determined to win a separate state of Eelam for the Tamil people even at the expense of a ferocious war. The JVP’s second insurgency had created near anarchy in the South. There was no possibility of fighting on two fronts and JRJ signed the agreement which brought the IPKF here. They were indeed trying times.
After the agreement had been signed in Colombo by President Jayewardene and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, a naval rating who was part of the guard-of-honour assembled opposite President’s House struck him a heavy blow on the shoulder with the butt of his gun. Fortunately he was not seriously hurt, suffering only bad bruises, and was immediately led to safety by his own and Sri Lankan security. This single incident which captured global headlines underlined the urgency of the country finding a solution to the serious ethnic division creating tensions amongst the people.
Two days later, President Jayewardene was due in Parliament as he wanted to address the Government Parliamentary Group and explain the reasons why he signed this Agreement/Pact with India. This fact was not fully known to many members of his own Cabinet, including possibly Prime Minister Premadasa. President Jayewardene had kept the contents and the substance of the Agreement a very close secret and possibly the only Minister who had been taken into his confidence was Gamini Dissanayake.
Parliament was due to sit that afternoon for its regular business. The President had arrived in Parliament that morning by around 9 a.m. to meet his Parliamentary Group. They were meeting in Committee Room 1, which is the largest Committee Room on the ground floor which had a seating capacity of almost 150. About 9.45 that morning I got a message that the President wanted to see me. I was initially reluctant to go to the Committee Room as it was a meeting of only Government MPs and I felt it was incorrect and unwise for me in my position to go there. But since it was the Head of the State and Government who summoned me, I went to the Committee Room. He was sitting at the head table with Prime Minister Premadasa on his right and Minister Vincent Perera, Chief Government Whip, on his left. In front of him sat over a 100 MPs with Ministers seated in the front rows.
He inquired from me what business was due to be taken up that day. I had taken the day’s Order Paper with me and together we read through the 25 items of Government business fixed for that day. When this was over, I left the Committee Room and went back to my office.
Not even half an hour later, my peon rushed into my room saying excitedly “Sir, the Prime Minister is calling for you”. Totally unaware of what was in store, I came to the ground floor and at the very entrance to the corridor leading up to the Committee Room I met the Prime Minister with his national dress cloth partly raised excitedly exclaiming “Nihal, a bomb has exploded in the Committee Room. Search and surround the place.” As I rushed to the Committee Room, I saw President Jayewardene, being hurriedly escorted out of the building to his vehicle parked outside the Member’s Entrance. I then rushed into the Committee Room and found it in shambles, full of heavy smoke, splintered glass and shrapnel all over the place; and a few MPs lying prostate on the floor. Others were trying to rush out in the melee that prevailed. I saw Minister Lalith Athulathmudali being placed on a stretcher, bleeding heavily, being taken by ambulance parked outside the Members’ Entrance to the Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital through the back entrance to Parliament. We had hardly used that entrance and kept it closed for security reasons but kept it open on sitting days as it was just about a mile’s distance to the Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital.
Akmeemana MP Kirthi Abeywickrema sadly died as a result of shrapnel hitting him on his temple. I was told by a Member that a bomb had exploded in the Committee Room. I immediately rang my University mate, Frank De Silva, then IGP, and told him to come immediately and asked him to provide adequate security right around the perimeters of Parliament to prevent anyone from leaving. I then ordered the Superintendent of Police posted to Parliament to ensure that no one be allowed to leave the building. In the Committee room, I asked an MP from where the bomb was thrown and he pointed to a door behind the head table.
I ordered all the Parliament staff on duty not to leave the building. Even after the police contingent arrived, no one was sure how exactly the bomb exploded, of whether it was a bomb at all or whether anyone had fired a gun or some other firearm. Even after the police arrived none of us knew exactly what had happened and I for one was beginning to suspect that somebody of even the President’s staff who accompanied him to the room or one of my own Parliamentary staff in the room may have been responsible.
Thinking it was a gunshot the IGP asked me to get each and every member of my staff to have both their hands checked for tell-tale traces of gunpowder believing it was because of the firing of a weapon. No one was allowed to leave the building and it was close to 9 p.m. that night when the meticulous checking was over. I then permitted the staff to leave. During this time I inquired from the Members how the door through which the attacker was believed to have entered opened and all they said was that some of them saw a hand clothed in a white sleeve throwing something at the polished table at which the President and the others were seated.
The next morning I checked whether all of my staff had come to office — all were present except for four — one in hospital, two on approved leave; but one person was missing and his house near Kadawatha was closed. Police after questioning neighbours learnt that the occupant had left his home that night taking his family with him. I found this was Ajith Kumara, who I had employed as a house-keeper a few years previously. The police regarded him as the prime suspect and an island-wide dragnet was set up.
After a few days, with Police help we were able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Ajith Kumara had come that morning with a hand grenade hidden in his shoe. The Police at the entrance had missed it. The President’s security had checked all the rooms and doors leading to the Committee Room, locked it and then left. Ajith Kumara, after the President’s security personnel had completed their checks, had opened a door using a false key he had made and had hidden behind himself a large painting standing on the ground.
He had then opened the door leading into the Committee Room, and aiming at the President flung the hand grenade he carried which fortunately bounced off the polished table at which the President, PM and Govt. Whip sat and landed under the chair on which Lalith Athulathmudali was sitting in the front row. The grenade then exploded blasting a large hole in the ground and injuring Lalith’s entire back.
When he was recovering in the Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital I called on him and chatted for a while. He was full of praise for Dr. K. Yoheswaran, who operated on him and saved his life. He told me that he had particularly wanted Dr. Yoheswaran to do the complicated surgery having complete trust in him.
Later on, after Lalith had recovered he walked into my room and discussed the incident with me. He told me that Ajith Kumara had made the fundamental mistake of hurling the grenade at the President as soon as he pulled off the pin. With Lalith’s knowledge of arms and defence matters, he told me that once the pin is pulled, one had to count, “One Thousand, Two Thousand, Three Thousand” and then throw the grenade. By his not doing so, all three VIPs seated at the table were spared. The grenade ricocheted off the table, fell under Lalith’s chair and then exploded injuring Lalith severely.
Six months had passed after the incident and the Police were still on maximum alert for Ajith Kumara. Apprehending the man who had nearly assassinated the President and Prime Minister was top priority. After a lapse of a few more months, the Police in the Kegalle area were searching for local kasippu distillers in a village paddy-field. It so happened that Ajith Kumara was then hiding in a small shed nearby; he panicked when he saw the police searching the paddy-field and ran away.
Police saw the fleeing suspect, chase and caught him. He was brought to Police Headquarters in Colombo and then realised they had made a prize catch. They immediately contacted me and we confirmed that this was indeed Ajith Kumara, the most wanted man in the country.
A week later, the police brought him to Parliament after he had confessed to his crime. He had even told the police how he brought in the grenade, the route he had taken through all the corridors to enter the back room and how he had hidden behind the painting. This was after the Presidential security had left after they had completed making their checks. We discovered later that he had surreptitiously made a copy of the key to enter that room.
Two days later, the Speaker and I were summoned before the Cabinet. Speaker E. L. Senanayake diplomatically refused to go saying it was improper for him to present himself before Cabinet. This left me with no option but to face the music. This was the very first time I had to appear before Cabinet and I nervously walked in feeling like the Christian being thrown to the wolves in Roman times. I knew they were going to ask me as to how I had recruited Ajith Kumara to the Parliament staff. Fortunately, I had asked for a security clearance from Police Headquarters which I had received before he was signed on. In fact, all recruits to our staff required such security clearance.
Armed with that clearance file, I sat down before the entire Cabinet. As I took my seat, Minister Montague Jayawickrama pounced on me asking me to explain how and why I had recruited Ajith Kumara and why I had stationed him that day and many other follow-up questions. I took time and answered all questions from him and many other Cabinet Ministers.
It later transpired that a few weeks after getting clearance from Police screening and having joined the staff of Parliament, the JVP had secretly recruited him. Since the JVP was then very vociferous against the Indo-Sri Lanka Pact signed by the President, they had found in Ajith Kumara working in Parliament the best possible person to assassinate the President, Prime Minister and other VIPs of Government.
I later had a request from Mrs. J.R. Jayewardene to visit the scene and see the room where her husband was nearly killed. She, accompanied by two grandchildren (sons of Ravi whom I knew quite well), inspected the table where the grenade bounced and the Committee Room where it all happened. I was quite moved by her presence and the gracious lady she was, left without making any comments.
The saga of Ajith Kumara had a strange ending. When he was produced in Court and charged with attempted murder, his counsel were able to get him discharged on the grounds of inadmissibility of the confession he had made to Police. Regrettably the Attorney General Dept’s and Police had mishandled the Prosecution and the judge discharged Ajith Kumara who left Court a free man.
My father was injured in the bomb blast  E.L.B. Hurulle My late father, E.L.B. Hurulle, too, was a victim of the 1987 bomb explosion in Parliament. My father lay on a bed, bleeding heavily from under one ear. On inquiring, I was told by the doctors that pieces of grenade shrapnel had entered from under one ear. The doctors said immediate surgery was not possible as they had to take multiple X-ray images to assess the damage and decide on how to carry out the surgery. There were no scans or MRIs at that time. As a result, father was in the accident service for several days before surgery was performed. Dr. Masakorale, the well-known surgeon, performed the operation and removed two fragments of grenade that had entered and lodged close to the main bloodstream. Had the fragments reached the bloodstream which were three tissue layers ahead, I was told that he would have been paralysed for life…therefore, he was fortunate in that sense. However, the explosion badly affected his hearing for the rest of his life. He was examined by several ENT consultants who confirmed that nothing could be done and wearing hearing aids might help. However, subsequent use of hearing aids did not help him much and he was severely disadvantaged as a result. In conclusion, I would add that the late E.L.B. Hurulle was saved from certain death by the explosion because, a second or two before the grenade was hurled, he had turned his head to speak to Ronnie De Mel, the then Finance Minister. This resulted in a third grenade fragment hitting an arm of his spectacles and bouncing off. (The shattered arm of the spectacles was later found on the floor of the Parliament Committee Room. Had the arm of the spectacle not absorbed the impact and obstructed its trajectory, it would have entered through his temple and death would have been certain. | |