The Criminal Investigations Department (CID) today (03) filed charge sheets against six suspects over the murder of Parliamentarian Nadarajah Raviraj.

Police today (03) obtained two enjoining orders, restricting the protest organized by Inter-University Students’ Federation (IUSF).

The issuance of electronic identity cards will begin in January, says finance minister Ravi Karunanayake.

Written evidence has come to light that Rs. 3.5 million of the State Mortgage and Investment Bank had been given to Pushpa Rajapaksa Foundation, run by Basil Rajapaksa’s wife, without cabinet approval.

Other concerns behind the police crackdown on protesting students in front of the UGC will be missed if it is taken as just another instance of police attack, Citizen’s Power co-convener Gamini Viyangoda says.

The attack as well as the invisible forces, which are political, that provoked the students into demonstrate should be looked into, he has told BBC Sandeshaya.

Govt. responsibility

Anyhow, the government has a responsibility to resolve any issue of students, he said, condemning the crackdown on them.

Also, questions should be asked as to the rationality of demands by student movements.

Making students to take to streets shows the dishonesty of political groups that had in the past described Tamils as terrorists, while calling the military and the police as war heroes.

Where were those groups when the military and the police harassed students and killed civilians of the northeast? he asked.

Political project

A group of MPs is involved in a political project within parliament against the present regime with the blessings of the former president, while other groups take it to the outside society, Viyangoda said.

He said he did not believe the police crackdown on the students to be a premeditated one, but that there definitely was an invisible hand behind it.

Under no circumstances, police should have acted so, he stressed, adding that political groups should stop using students as a weapon to achieve their petty political objectives.

Rathupaswala residents say that the issues they are facing due to contaminated water are still prevailing.