The abortive January 1962 Ceylon coup d’etat Efficiency Medal, GVIR 1st type bust, Colonial issue for Ceylon awarded to Captain W.S. Abraham, M.B.E. Ceylon Garrison Artillery who had been appointed an Ordinary Member of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the London Gazette of 4th June 1948 whilst serving as a Staff Captain, Headquarters, Ceylon Garrison. He would later be tasked with taking ‘Temple Trees’, the Prime Minister’s official residence in the 1962 coup d’etat. Put on trial for his part in the action, he would die before the trial would be completed.
Efficiency Medal, GVIR 1st type bust, Colonial issue for Ceylon; (CAPTAIN W.S. ABRAHAM. M.B.E. C.G.A.)
Condition: edge-bruise at 4 o’clock, Good Very Fine
Wilmot Selvanayagam Abraham was appointed to be an Ordinary Member of the Military Division of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the London Gazette of 4th June 1948, at the time he was serving as a Staff Captain, Headquarters, Ceylon Garrison.
Abraham would be involved in the abortive coup d’etat in Ceylon that was to take place on 27th January 1962 where he as the Commanding Officer of the 3rd Field Artillery Regiment was tasked with taking over the Prime Minister’s official residence ‘Temple Trees’ with some other soldiers.
24 members of the attempted coups were indicted by the Attorney General, and would receive a trial at the hands of a three judge bench. Abraham is noted as having died on 6th August 1964 before the completion of the trial. 11 defendants would be convicted on 6th April 165, but having appealed to the British Privy Council on the grounds that they were convicted under a law passed retroactively to apply to the coup conspiracy, they were then freed on the basis their convictions on the basis that ex-post-facto statute was unconstitutional.