President Anura Kumara Dissanayake appointed three new High Court judges on Wednesday, handing over their letters of appointment at the President’s Office during a morning ceremony.
The three appointees are Perumal Sivakumar, until now the District Judge of Jaffna; Anandi Kanagaratnam, who has been serving as Senior Assistant Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission; and Gnanesa Lalith Kannangara, the District Judge of Colombo. All three are Special Grade officers of the Judicial Service.
Secretary to the President Dr Nandika Sanath Kumanayake was present at the ceremony, according to the government news portal News.lk.
The appointments elevate two sitting district judges and a senior Judicial Service Commission official to the High Court, the tier that hears the most serious criminal cases, including murder, major narcotics matters and prosecutions brought under special statutes.
Photographs published alongside the government announcement show each appointee receiving their letter individually, in three separate handovers in the same room.
NewsFirst, reporting the same ceremony, described the venue as the Presidential Secretariat and gave the second appointee’s name as Anandhi Kanagaratnam; this report follows the spelling used by the government news portal.
Neither the President’s Office nor the reporting outlets named the courts to which the three judges will be assigned.
