‘Premakeerthi Ghathanaye Sulamula’ Dharman Explores Premakeerthi’s killing in a new book

Investigative journalist Dharman Wickremaratne continues his series of books unearthing Sri Lanka’s bloody, turbulent history of the 1980s with the fourth title – ‘Premakeerthi Ghathanaye Sulamula’, the story behind Premakeerthi’s assassination.’

Radio announcer, producer and lyricist Premakeerthi de Alwis was murdered close to his Homagama home in July 1989. It was widely believed that the group of assassins that forced him out of his home and shot him were JVP cadres. A seventeen-year-old called Saman Priyankara Gamage was found guilty of the murder and sentenced to life in prison (freed 18 years later due to good conduct). 

Years later, Premakeerthi’s widow, Nirmala, came out with a bombshell, accusing former director of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, Hudson Samarasinghe, of masterminding the much-loved Premakeerthi’s killing. Samarasinghe responded with a libel case, which was withdrawn after Nirmala de Alwis’ death. In 2019, she sat next to the current president and then presidential candidate Anura Kumara Dissanayake during a propaganda meeting, and publicly declared that the JVP wasn’t responsible for her husband’s murder.

But the fact remains that a JVP member spent 18 years in jail after a court of law found him guilty of killing Premakeerthi de Alwis. 

With his usual thoroughness, author Dharman Wickremaratne has left no corner uncovered and has drawn from press and court reports, eyewitness accounts and numerous interviews in compiling this fascinating account. 

(Author publication – priced at Rs. 1200 – [email protected]).