Colombo Fort Magistrate Pasan Amarasena on Wednesday adjourned until 25 November the case against retired Major General Suresh Sallay, the former State Intelligence Service director being held and questioned by the CID over the Easter Sunday attacks investigation.

The magistrate also ordered the first and second suspects further remanded until 4 November, Hiru News reported at 3.32 p.m. Sallay and two other suspects appeared before the court by video link.

The orders followed submissions from the Criminal Investigation Department.

The request for eight officers

The substantive development was made by Additional Solicitor General Dileepa Peiris, appearing for the Attorney General.

He told the court that when the verdict in the main Easter Sunday case was delivered by the three-judge High Court at Colombo, three of the defendants in that case said — in a remark rendered in Hiru’s Sinhala filing as “even though we have gone to jail, there are others connected to this” — and asked the court to appoint eight officers to investigate those statements.

The quotation above is a translation from Hiru’s Sinhala text and is not presented as the defendants’ verbatim English words.

That request matters more than the adjournment. It is an application to open a fresh investigative strand off the back of remarks made in open court by men already convicted, and it implies the prosecution regards the September judgment as having left participants unaccounted for.

The case this refers to

The main Easter case concluded in September, when the three-judge High Court found 15 defendants guilty and acquitted nine, then imposed sentences totalling 220 years and ordered property confiscated. Several of those convicted moved the Supreme Court against their sentences the following day.

Sallay’s own proceedings are separate. He was arrested by the CID in February and has been held under a detention order under the Prevention of Terrorism Act while the Easter investigation continues. He is the third suspect in the matter before the Fort Magistrate — which is why Wednesday’s remand order covers the first and second suspects but not him. A detention order and remand are different forms of custody, and the filing does not state whether his detention order has been extended again.

Last week he appeared in an unrelated matter, brought to the permanent three-judge High Court under CID guard as prosecution witness No. 90 in the Prageeth Ekneligoda case — a witness there, not an accused.

Not reported

Hiru’s filing does not name the two co-suspects, state what the CID told the court about investigative progress, or say whether the magistrate granted the application for eight officers — only that it was made. It does not report the status of Sallay’s detention order, whether any bail application was made, or what the next step is before 25 November. It gives no account of which three defendants made the remarks or at what point in the September proceedings.

On sourcing. This is a single-source report. The Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing carried no item on Wednesday’s hearing at the time of writing, and searches of NewsFirst, the Daily FT, the Island and EconomyNext returned no filing on it. Ada Derana could not be checked: its site has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than a month.

On the name. This desk’s archive renders the surname Sallay; NewsFirst and some other outlets use Salley, and Hiru’s English URL spells it Saleh. All three refer to the same person. Hiru renders the Additional Solicitor General’s name as Dilip Peiris; the form used here, Dileepa Peiris, is the one carried in earlier reporting on this case.

The other business of the same hearing. Wednesday’s sitting also took up former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s motion seeking permission to travel abroad for medical treatment. The court rejected it on a date defect, and the same Additional Solicitor General told the bench that Rajapaksa has not been named a suspect in this investigation — reported separately in Court rejects Gotabaya’s travel motion over a date error. The two matters were disposed of at one calling; NewsFirst filed on the Gotabaya motion but not on the adjournment and remand orders recorded above, which is why the sourcing on the two reports differs.