A senior police officer was murdered by a mob in northern Sri Lanka Thursday after a barber giving a hair cut was accidentally shot dead, police chief Chandra Fernando said. A senior police officer was murdered by a mob in northern Sri Lanka Thursday after a barber giving a hair cut was accidentally shot dead, police chief Chandra Fernando said. Police Superintendent Charles Wijewardena was investigating the killing of the barber when a Tamil mob turned against him, military officials said.
“The mob had blocked his vehicle and when he got off, he was abducted,” Fernando told AFP. “We tried to secure his release through ceasefire monitors, but now we have found his body.”
Wijewardena was trying to investigate the shooting of the barber, who the authorities said was killed accidentally while giving a hair cut to a soldier at Inuvil in the northern peninsula of Jaffna.
Three soldiers visited the barber shop when one of their automatic assault rifles fired accidentally, killing the barber as he was cutting the hair of a trooper, officials said earlier in the day.
However, residents of the former Tamil separatist rebel stronghold that is now controlled by