MP Namal Rajapaksa, held on remand since early September, has marked his 50th day in custody with a letter saying he would be willing to stay in prison for 500 days rather than 50 if it did the country good and if promises made to the people were kept.
The letter was issued from the Parliament complex on Friday, Hiru News reported on Saturday morning.
Rajapaksa writes that although prison walls surround him, he knows there is a far larger “wall of people” on the other side of them, and that the effort made to imprison him is the clearest illustration of pressure being applied by a particular group. He says he suspects that being Mahinda Rajapaksa’s eldest son was itself a reason for his imprisonment.
The letter also addresses political attacks, harm to the country’s religious and cultural identity, and the economic situation. At a time when investment has been lost and people are in serious difficulty, he writes, attempting to hide the weight of the country’s problems behind a single family is laughable, and demonstrates the incapacity of those now governing.
He says he has a firm belief that a court will acquit and free him, and adds that while individuals can be imprisoned, the aspirations of a people cannot be.
The document is on Parliament letterhead
Hiru published a photograph of the letter itself, and it is partly legible. It is written on official Parliament stationery — the mace emblem above “පාර්ලිමේන්තුව / பாராளுமன்றம் / PARLIAMENT” — which is consistent with Hiru’s statement that it was issued from the parliamentary complex rather than from prison.
That detail is worth recording, because this archive has carried several reports of Rajapaksa making public statements while in remand custody, which reads as a contradiction. The letterhead indicates the ordinary mechanism: statements are issued through his parliamentary office, not made in person.
The letter’s own heading reads “හෙට දිනට මා සිරගත වී දින 50කි” — “as of tomorrow, it will be 50 days since I was imprisoned” — which fixes it to Friday the 23rd and puts the 50th day on Saturday. Hiru’s report, filed Saturday, renders this as 50 days “today”. The two agree.
One passage in the letter is not reflected in Hiru’s summary. Alongside the general reference to cultural damage, the text names the tusker Kavantissa, describing him as an inheritance of the country and writing of the animal being brought to distress. The treatment of the tusker has been a running controversy, and the letter ties it to his argument about respect for the country’s heritage. The summary drops the reference.
Context
Rajapaksa has been in remand custody since the first week of September. A 50th day falling on 24 October places the start on or about 5 September. He has been produced repeatedly since, with remand dates of October 6, October 16 and October 23, and on Friday the Colombo Chief Magistrate refused bail and remanded him to November 6 in the Krrish transaction case, in which he is the fourth suspect.
Not reported
Hiru does not publish the letter in full, name a recipient, or say who released it. It does not say which of the several cases against Rajapaksa the “promises given to the people” refers to, and gives no response from the government or the Attorney General.
No other verified newsroom whose filing could be dated had carried the letter at the time of writing. The aggregator Newswire, which is not a verified newsroom, filed its own account on Saturday morning. The Daily Mirror reported a separate letter from Mahinda Rajapaksa to his son on Thursday, urging him to place his trust in the judiciary and avoid political revenge; that report carried no machine-readable publication date and is therefore described here rather than cited.
Sources: “I am ready to stay in prison for 500 days if it is good for the country” — a special letter from Namal Rajapaksa on the 50th day of his remand — Hiru News, October 24 (Sinhala).
