Colombo Fort Magistrate Pasan Amarasena on Wednesday ordered the Criminal Investigation Department’s Illegal Assets Investigation Unit to arrest former Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa and to take steps to obtain an Interpol Red Notice, three verified newsrooms reported.

The magistrate also directed that the arrest warrant be issued in both Sinhala and English to facilitate the Red Notice process, NewsFirst and Hiru News reported — a procedural detail the Daily Mirror’s account does not carry.

The orders followed submissions by the CID’s Illegal Assets Investigation Unit concerning Rs. 7.8 million allocated to the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau in 2014. Investigators told the court the money was not spent on the bureau’s promotional work but on producing 12,000 T-shirts for the Uva Provincial Council election campaign, causing a loss to the government.

This is the same case the court set down for today, four months ago

The filing reads as a fresh development. It is better understood as a scheduled return.

This newsroom reported the original arrest order in this case on 29 May — the same magistrate, the same Rs. 7.8 million, the same 12,000 T-shirts. The CID then told the court that attempts to arrest the suspects at their known residences had failed because they were not present, and the magistrate imposed a foreign travel ban and notified the Controller General of Immigration and Emigration.

On 17 June, when the case was recalled, Amarasena again directed the CID’s Illegal Assets Unit to arrest Rajapaksa and produce him before court. That hearing fixed the next date: the case was scheduled to be recalled on 14 October — today.

Wednesday’s order is therefore the third arrest order issued against Rajapaksa in this single case in under five months, and none of the three filings notes that the first two have not produced an arrest. Also charged are former SLTPB Chairman Bhashwara Gunaratne and former Managing Director Rumy Jauffer, the latter released on bail in June on two personal bails of Rs. 1 million.

Blue in September, Red in October — what the escalation implies

The step to a Red Notice is the more significant half of Wednesday’s order, and it carries an implication none of the filings draws out.

In September, Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala said a Blue Notice had been issued for Rajapaksa — an account NewsFirst complicated the same day, quoting a senior police officer who said Interpol had asked Sri Lanka for further information before acting. Wijepala drew the distinction between the two instruments himself:

On the minister’s own criteria, moving from one to the other implies a change in what the state says it knows about where Rajapaksa is. That inference should be held loosely: Interpol’s own definition of a Red Notice does not require that a subject’s location be unknown, and a court — not the minister — issued Wednesday’s direction. But no filing reconciles the September position with the October one, and none reports whether the Blue Notice was ever issued after Interpol’s request for more information.

Not reported

None of the three filings says where Basil Rajapaksa is. That is the question a Red Notice exists to answer, and it is unaddressed in every account — as is whether he is in Sri Lanka, whether the May travel ban remains in force, and whether he has legal representation appearing in these proceedings.

No filing gives the next hearing date, says whether the Attorney General has advised on further suspects — a question the court raised in June concerning the Bureau’s Financial Director, on which the CID said the AG’s advice was still pending — or reports any response from Rajapaksa or his lawyers. None states whether this Red Notice request relates only to the tourism-funds case or to the Brown Hill property matter and other proceedings running in parallel.

Ada Derana has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for twenty-five consecutive days and could not be checked.