The state has re-imposed the death penalty as a deterrent to curb the growing incidence of heinous crimes in the country during the last two decades. Incidence of murder, drug trafficking, rape and other crimes had grown by leaps and bounds during the past two decades due to various reasons, presumably due to the abolition of the capital punishment, Police said. At a recent forum in Colombo it was pointed out that contract killing has become the order of the day. Murder is carried out for a couple of hundred thousand rupees depending on the person to be murdered.
Contract killing is simple.
The term of the contract is that the assassin had to be in prison pending a politically influenced pardon for good behaviour or amnesty on adverse medical grounds. The speaker referring to rape and murder asked whether there was anything more sinister because the evidence of the victim is completely shut off and the rapist gets away with it. They were committed on the spur of the moment due to sudden provocation. The rest were due to brawls and clashes among violent gangs under the influence of liquor. In 1939, for the first time in Ceylon, the Police Department documented crime statistics and figures showed that in 1939, there were 2810.6 cases per million persons.