The Cabinet of Ministers has approved the publication of a draft bill aimed at preventing and combating organised crime in Sri Lanka, and its subsequent presentation to Parliament.
The bill is intended to create the legal provisions needed to implement the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, to strengthen national and international cooperation against serious crime, and to protect society from the threat posed by organised criminal groups. NewsFirst adds that a further stated objective is to strengthen the state’s ability to prevent, detect and respond to serious offences.
The Attorney General’s Department has already cleared the draft. Cabinet approved a joint proposal from the Minister of Justice and National Integration and the Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs to publish the bill in the Government Gazette and then present it to Parliament for approval. Those portfolios are held by Harshana Nanayakkara and Ananda Wijepala respectively; neither report names them.
The March 30 date, resolved
Daily Mirror’s account states that “the decision was taken at the Cabinet meeting held on March 30, 2026, following the preparation of the draft legislation by the Drafting Officer” — a sentence that does not sit easily with a story filed on September 8.
NewsFirst settles it. Cabinet granted initial approval for the drafting of a law on the prevention of organised crime at its meeting on 30 March; this week’s decision approves the finished draft for gazetting and presentation. That is the two-stage sequence Sri Lankan cabinet papers of this kind normally follow, and it is the only reading under which a draft could have been written and cleared by the Attorney General in the interval. Daily Mirror compressed the two stages into one sentence.
NewsFirst introduces an error of its own in the other direction, describing the proposal as coming from the Justice and Public Security ministers “along with the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs,” as though three people were involved. Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs are a single portfolio, and Daily Mirror renders it correctly as two ministers.
The gap it is meant to fill
The framing of the proposal — creating provisions to “implement” the convention — indicates Sri Lanka is legislating to bring existing obligations into domestic law rather than joining the treaty for the first time. Neither report says which of the convention’s requirements the bill covers.
The bill is also the companion to a measure Cabinet approved three weeks ago. On 18 August, Cabinet cleared a new counter-terrorism bill to replace the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act. At the briefing that followed, Cabinet Spokesman Nalinda Jayatissa argued that while the PTA should go, provisions had to remain in place to prevent organised crime once it was repealed.
That is the space this bill occupies. The PTA has repeatedly been applied to conduct closer to organised crime than to terrorism — charges under the Act against the suspect known as “Harak Kata” were dismissed by the Colombo High Court in July on the ground that they could not stand. Neither report says whether the two bills are meant to move through Parliament together.
Still unsettled
The bill joins an already heavy legislative programme: the Chief of Defence Staff (Removal) Bill was listed for Wednesday on this week’s order paper, and the Anti-Corruption Bill and the 22nd Amendment are both before the Supreme Court.
It has not been tabled. Both accounts describe the same two-step sequence — gazette first, Parliament afterwards. Neither gives the bill’s formal title or a date for gazetting. Because the text is unpublished, the definition of “organised crime” it adopts, and the powers of arrest, detention and asset seizure it carries, are not yet known.
