Retired Major General Suresh Sallay, the former State Intelligence Service director, was brought to the Permanent Three-Judge High Court on Friday under special Criminal Investigation Department security — to give evidence in the case over the abduction and enforced disappearance of journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda.
He appeared as a witness, not as an accused. Hiru News reports that notices were issued to call the evidence of witness No. 53, investigating officer Premaratne, and witness No. 90, Suresh Sallay — and that Sallay expressed his willingness to give evidence in the case. Evidence was led by Deputy Solicitor General Wasantha Perera for the Attorney General.
Sallay was questioned on army law and various documents of the military intelligence division, and on statements he had previously given about the disappearance, Hiru reports.
NewsFirst reported the same appearance, describing him as brought before the court “to give evidence,” and gives the charge basis: the Attorney General filed the case under the Penal Code against the defendants on several counts, including conspiring with an unidentified group on or about 25 January 2010 to abduct Ekneligoda in the Giritale, Habarana and Kottawa areas with the intention of secretly detaining him.
Why the distinction matters
A headline reading that a former intelligence chief was “produced before” a trial-at-bar invites the inference that he is in the dock. In this case he is not. Hiru’s numbered witness list settles it: Sallay is No. 90 on the prosecution’s own list of witnesses, called on notice, and he consented to testify.
That is worth stating plainly because Sallay is an accused elsewhere. He is named as the third suspect in the reopened Easter Sunday attacks investigation, and it was at a hearing of that case on 3 June that the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court imposed the overseas travel ban on former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa — the ban Rajapaksa asked the same court to lift on Friday. This desk has also covered his writ petition against detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Easter file and the Ekneligoda file are separate proceedings, and his status differs in each.
The witness who was recalled
The two filings differ on what happened with the other witness, and Hiru’s account is the fuller one.
NewsFirst says Suresh Kumara Sumathipala, the fourth witness, provided testimony. Hiru says the evidence of Sumathipala Suresh Kumara, alias “Murali”, the fourth witness, was recalled — that is, he was brought back to give evidence again rather than testifying for the first time. Hiru also supplies the alias, which NewsFirst omits.
Note the name collision running through Friday’s filings: Suresh Kumara Sumathipala, the fourth witness, and Suresh Sallay, witness No. 90, are different people appearing in the same case on the same day.
The bench is the permanent three-judge High Court comprising Presiding Judge Nayana Seneviratne with Judge Nalin Hewawasam and Judge Lakmali Hewawasam, sitting at 121/1 Wijerama Mawatha, Colombo 7, an address only Hiru gives.
That is the same panel of three judges Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena named on 3 May 2026 when he appointed a permanent Trial-at-Bar to the case, replacing the ad-hoc panels that had repeatedly stalled it. Friday’s sitting is that bench, unchanged, five and a half months on.
Ekneligoda, a cartoonist and political analyst with the Lanka eNews website, was abducted on the night of 24 January 2010, two days before that year’s presidential election, and no confirmed information about his fate has ever been disclosed. The charge NewsFirst describes puts the alleged conspiracy “on or about 25 January” — the day after the night of the abduction — and no filing explains the discrepancy between the two dates. The case is one of seven high-profile prosecutions the government pledged to reopen.
Not reported
Neither filing says what Sallay’s evidence was, whether he completed it, or whether he is to be recalled. Neither gives the next trial date. Neither names the defendants in the dock or says how many there are — both refer only to “the defendants,” though this desk’s earlier reporting records that military intelligence officers are among those charged. Neither explains why Murali’s evidence was recalled, or on whose application. And neither says whether witness No. 53, the investigating officer Premaratne, has yet been called.
