The Colombo High Court has ordered that the Central Bank bond scam case against 11 accused — including former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake and former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran — be recalled on 4 October.
High Court Judge Lanka Jayaratne postponed the case until a new Permanent Trial-at-Bar is appointed, noting that the three-judge bench previously assigned to hear it had not yet been fully constituted, NewsFirst reported.
The Attorney General has filed the case against Karunanayake, Mahendran, Pattinige Samaraweera, Arjun Aloysius and others under 32 indictments.
The obstacle is now the court, not only the accused
The delays in this prosecution have until now turned on the absence of the first accused. Mahendran has remained outside Sri Lanka throughout, and the state has been unable to produce him — as recently as late August the government was still confronting a legal barrier to his extradition.
Thursday’s order identifies a different problem. A Permanent Trial-at-Bar is a standing three-judge panel constituted to hear a specific case without a jury, used for complex prosecutions. If the assigned bench was never fully constituted, the case cannot proceed regardless of who appears — the delay is administrative, and its resolution lies with the judicial appointing authority rather than with the parties.
A discrepancy with Wednesday’s hearing
This account does not align cleanly with the bond scam hearing reported one day earlier, and the difference should not be smoothed over.
On Wednesday, NewsFirst reported that the case against ten accused was taken up before the Permanent Trial-at-Bar comprising Judges Priyantha Liyanage, Viraj Weerasuriya and Tilakaratne Bandara, under 23 indictments, and was recalled for a pre-trial conference on 24 November.
Thursday’s report gives a different judge, a different accused count (11), a different indictment count (32), a different return date (4 October), and states that the assigned three-judge bench was never fully constituted. Ravi Karunanayake is named among the accused on Thursday but did not appear in Wednesday’s list.
The two may be separate prosecutions arising from the same 2015 bond auctions, or the same matter reported with different particulars. No outlet reconciles them, and the reporting does not permit the difference to be resolved.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not itemise the 32 indictments or state the total sum alleged. It does not say who appeared on Thursday, whether Mahendran was again absent, which authority must constitute the new bench or by when, or what becomes of the 24 November pre-trial date reported the previous day.
No other verified newsroom had filed on Thursday’s hearing at the time of publication. Ada Derana’s site has returned a CloudFront block on every attempt across recent cycles and could not be checked.
