Six people charged over the arson attack on former President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s private residence during the 2022 protests were acquitted and discharged on Wednesday on the instructions of the Attorney General, NewsFirst reported.
Those discharged include activist Piyath Nikeshala, former Member of Parliament J. Sri Ranga, Bimal Jayasuriya and Senadhi Koshan. All six had been arrested and later released on bail. The report does not name the remaining two.
The matter was taken up before Fort Magistrate Pasan Amarasena, who, after considering the facts placed before him, also lifted the overseas travel ban imposed on all 29 suspects named in the investigation.
A case that has been emptying out for some time
Wednesday’s order is not the first of its kind in this prosecution. Several suspects had already been released at earlier hearings, also on the Attorney General’s recommendation, NewsFirst reports — so the six discharged on Wednesday are the latest in a sequence rather than a single decision disposing of the case.
The lifting of the travel ban on all 29, rather than only on those discharged, is the broader of the two orders. It applies to suspects whose position in the case the report does not otherwise describe.
The date of the fire
NewsFirst dates the torching of the residence to 9 May 2022. The contemporaneous record does not support that date. Reporting the investigation in April 2023, the Daily Mirror stated that protesters torched the residence on 9 July 2022 — the day demonstrators overran the Presidential Secretariat, and more than two months after the 9 May violence with which it is easily confused.
Both dates fall within the same protest movement, and 9 May 2022 saw a wave of arson attacks on politicians’ homes islandwide. On the evidence available to this desk the July date is the correct one for this property, and the May date in Wednesday’s filing appears to be an error.
Not reported
The filing does not name the two remaining discharged suspects, state how many of the original 29 are still before the court, or say what becomes of the charges against them. It gives no reason for the Attorney General’s instruction, and carries no response from Wickremesinghe, from the Attorney General’s Department or from those discharged.
No other verified newsroom reachable by this desk carried the decision. The Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing did not include it, and Ada Derana’s site has returned a CloudFront block here for sixteen consecutive days.
Sources: NewsFirst.
