The Colombo High Court has sentenced a woman to life imprisonment after finding her guilty of possessing and trafficking narcotics, in a case brought over a seizure in the Wellampitiya area more than four years ago.
The verdict was delivered by Colombo High Court Judge Lanka Jayaratne on Friday (Oct. 2) at the end of a lengthy trial, Hiru News and Sri Lanka Mirror reported.
The Attorney General had filed charges in connection with the possession and trafficking of 4.95 grams of narcotics in Wellampitiya on 13 August 2022. Delivering the verdict, the judge said the prosecution had proved the charges against the accused beyond reasonable doubt, and ordered that she be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Sri Lanka Mirror reported that the sentence carries hard labour, and named the accused as Mohamed Jahir Fathima Rizana, a mother of three from the Wellampitiya area known by the alias “Kudu Batti”. According to that account, the drugs were heroin, concealed in her brassiere.
Hiru News described the drugs only as narcotics and did not name the accused. The two reports agree on the court, the judge, the verdict and the sentence.
A four-year gap between seizure and verdict
The interval between the August 2022 seizure and the verdict is characteristic of narcotics cases in the High Court, where indictments filed by the Attorney General’s Department routinely take years to reach trial.
The quantity involved is small by the standards of the trafficking cases that draw national attention — the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against “Wele Suda” in a far larger case — but Sri Lankan narcotics law sets its most severe penalties by weight thresholds measured in grams rather than kilograms, which is why a sub-five-gram quantity can attract a life term.
Following the verdict, the woman’s husband was seen behaving in a disruptive manner outside the court, according to Hiru News.
Not reported
Neither outlet stated whether the defence intends to appeal, nor what role, if any, the accused was found to have played in a wider supply network.
