The Supreme Court has declared null and void a remission of sentence granted by former President Ranil Wickremesinghe to a man jailed for failing to pay maintenance to his former wife, ruling that the decision violated the fundamental right to equality.
A three-judge bench of Justice Janak de Silva, Justice Dr Sobhitha Rajakaruna and Justice Sampath K.B. Wijeratne held that the former President, the Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and the Commissioner General of Prisons had all acted in violation of Article 12(1) of the Constitution, which guarantees equality before the law and equal protection of the law, the Daily Mirror reported on Monday afternoon.
Hiru News, reporting the same judgment, adds that it was delivered on 23 October and names the man as Mohamed Ameen Mohamed Naseem. The Daily Mirror does not name him.
How the case arose
The petitioner, Ahamed Jaleel Farmilla Begum, had obtained a maintenance order from the Colombo East Quazi Court directing her former husband to pay a total of Rs 60,000. When he failed to comply, the Magistrate’s Court of Negombo issued an enforcement certificate for maintenance arrears of Rs 1.74 million. He was sentenced to 29 months’ imprisonment and admitted to prison in July 2024.
On the recommendation of the then Minister of Justice for a general amnesty to mark Prisoners’ Day, the remainder of that sentence was remitted and he was released on 12 September 2024 — having served less than two months of the 29.
Begum challenged the remission as arbitrary, arguing it had deprived her of any means of recovering the arrears.
The comparison that decided it
The case turned on a second prisoner. Begum pointed to Mohamed Faizal Mohamed Nawshad, also jailed for defaulting on maintenance, who had served roughly eight months of a 27-month sentence when the same amnesty was granted — and received only a one-week remission.
The difference, the court found, was in the paperwork. Her former husband’s warrant of commitment described his sentence as being in default of payment of a “fine”, which brought him within the amnesty’s terms; Nawshad’s did not. The bench ruled that this distinction in wording had no substantive legal basis, since both men had been imprisoned for the same thing — defaulting on maintenance — and that the difference could not justify treating them so unequally.
Context
The judgment lands on the same day the United National Party called for an immediate presidential pardon for Gnanasara Thera, and follows a claim by former minister Patali Champika Ranawaka, reported last week, that the current President has pardoned hundreds of convicts. The two matters are unrelated to this case, which concerns a 2024 amnesty under the previous administration; the common thread is judicial and political attention to how the pardon power is exercised.
What is not established
Neither filing reports what the practical effect of the judgment is for Naseem — whether he must return to prison to serve the remaining sentence, or whether the ruling only reopens Begum’s route to recovering the arrears. Neither says whether any compensation or costs were ordered, nor whether the Rs 1.74 million has since been paid in whole or part.
Neither outlet reports whether the respondents were represented or what the state’s position was, and neither carries any response from Wickremesinghe. The filings do not say whether the judgment affects any other release granted under the same Prisoners’ Day amnesty.
The two figures in this report describe different things and are not in conflict: Rs 60,000 is the amount of the original Quazi Court order, and Rs 1.74 million the arrears certified by the Magistrate’s Court.
