The Cabinet of Ministers has approved an amendment to the Civil Procedure Code allowing courts to record witness testimony by live audio-visual link from anywhere in Sri Lanka or abroad, extending to civil litigation a facility that already exists in criminal proceedings.
“The Cabinet has approved the amendment to empower the Court to direct persons to give evidence through simultaneous audio-visual link from any place within or outside Sri Lanka,” Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa said, according to EconomyNext.
“We previously implemented this for criminal cases. Now, utilizing modern technology, it is being extended to civil proceedings as well to expedite court proceedings.”
A court will be able to order remote evidence either at the request of the parties or on its own motion.
A deliberately narrow amendment
Jayatissa said the amendment applies only to enabling remote witness testimony and leaves the rest of the Civil Procedure Code unchanged.
Not yet law
Cabinet approval is not the final step. The draft bill, prepared by the Legal Draftsman, has been cleared by the Attorney General. It will next be published in the Government Gazette and placed before Parliament for approval, on a proposal by the Minister of Justice and National Integration.
Jayatissa added that the technical equipment required is scheduled to be distributed to most courts across the island by the end of this month — a rollout falling within days of the announcement.
The criminal-case precedent
The system was first introduced for child witnesses in criminal trials. Its most prominent recent use has been in the Lalith–Kugan disappearance case: the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court allowed former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to testify by video link in June, and in August directed him to give that evidence from the Colombo Magistrate’s Court on September 29.
Aimed at a backlog measured in millions
The change is the latest of several attempts to move cases through the courts faster. Estimates of the pending caseload cited this year have ranged from 1.1 million, in a July proposal by Ranil Wickremesinghe for a parliamentary select committee, to 1.2 million, cited in August when twenty companies pledged to route commercial disputes through mediation.
EconomyNext did not report whether remote evidence will require the consent of both parties, how the identity of a witness testifying from overseas would be verified or an oath administered, or which courts are to be equipped first. As of Wednesday morning no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own report of this decision.
