The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by a man convicted of raping his biological daughter and affirmed the 15 years’ rigorous imprisonment imposed on him by the Hambantota High Court, the Daily Mirror reported.
The bench of Justices Amal Ranaraja and Dr. Sumudu Premachandra held there was no merit in the appeal against the conviction for incestuous statutory rape.
The case
The accused was indicted over three alleged incidents of sexual abuse involving his daughter between October 1 and October 31, 2018.
The High Court sentenced him to 15 years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined him Rs. 10,000. It also ordered him to pay the victim Rs. 400,000 in compensation, with a further six months’ rigorous imprisonment in default of payment of each amount.
The grounds of appeal
The accused challenged the conviction on several grounds:
- that the prosecution had failed to establish the date or time of the offence
- that the victim’s testimony was improbable
- that leading questions had been used
- that the trial judge had mishandled his unsworn statement from the dock
The Court of Appeal rejected all of them. Delivering the judgment, Justice Dr. Sumudu Premachandra held that the prosecution’s version was probable and that there was no basis for the appellate court to interfere with the trial judge’s findings.
The court dismissed the appeal and affirmed both the conviction and the sentence, directing that the sentence run from the date of conviction, July 16, 2025. The fine and the compensation order were left undisturbed.
That start date matters in practice: the sentence is treated as having begun more than a year before the appeal was decided, rather than from the date of the appellate ruling.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not name the accused — appropriately, given that identifying him would identify the victim — but it also does not give the victim’s age at the time of the offences, which is the element that makes the charge statutory rape, or say on how many of the three counts the High Court convicted. It does not say when the appeal was filed or argued, whether the accused has been in custody since conviction, or whether any further appeal to the Supreme Court is open or intended.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the judgment at the time of writing; neither the Hiru News nor NewsFirst listings carried it, and Ada Derana’s site was returning a CloudFront error.
