Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama on Wednesday fixed 3 November to deliver his order on the bail application filed for MP Namal Rajapaksa, who is in remand custody over the Krrish land transaction.
The magistrate set the date after hearing submissions from the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) and from the suspect’s counsel, the Daily Mirror reported. The motion seeking bail was filed by President’s Counsel Ali Sabry, according to Hiru News.
Two dates now run together. The magistrate told open court that the suspect stands remanded until 6 November in the same matter — the date this desk reported on 23 October — while the bail ruling itself will come three days earlier, on the 3rd.
The allegation
Rajapaksa was remanded over allegations that he accepted a bribe of Rs 100 million in connection with facilitating the transfer of land at Transworks Square, Colombo Fort, to the Krrish Group for a multi-purpose development project.
A dispute over one sentence
Most of the hearing turned on a remark defence counsel made the previous day. CIABOC’s Assistant Director (Legal) Thanuja Bandara told the court she wished to respond to it: that those who behave oppressively today become the oppressed tomorrow.
She read it as aimed at the case’s witnesses. Witnesses who were afraid to give statements at the outset, she said, came forward without fear only after Rajapaksa and Janaki Siriwardena were remanded, and two of them had since said they were not afraid to tell the truth. “If witnesses are influenced in some way, that is not justifiable,” she said. She opposed bail on the gravity of the investigation, and said the plea that the suspect was needed to care for his parents did not hold because others were available to look after them.
Ali Sabry rejected the reading. He had not said an oppressor becomes the oppressed, he told the court — he had meant that the wheel turns — and if the commission wished to take the remark personally, that was its choice. He went on to accuse the President of announcing in advance the dates on which judgments would be delivered, and invoked the constitutional presumption of innocence and the guarantee against differential treatment on grounds including religion, caste and political opinion. “We don’t want special treatment — treat us normally, without discrimination,” he said, adding that judicial power should not be exercised at anyone’s pleasure.
Sabry argued that defendants in drug trafficking cases carrying the death penalty are granted bail pending trial, while the maximum sentence in this bribery matter is ten years, and cited his client’s mother’s bypass surgery and his father’s blood-pressure condition. CIABOC replied that the statements it had placed before court were not false.
Figures and citations to treat with care
Three points in the Sinhala filing do not survive checking cleanly, and this desk has not reproduced them as fact:
- Sabry is quoted saying his client “has been in remand 50 days.” This desk recorded the 50-day mark on 24 October; by Wednesday the count would be closer to 54. The figure reads as a round one rather than a running tally.
- The constitutional citation in the Hiru text is internally inconsistent, rendering the provisions as chapters of a “13th Constitution.” The protections Sabry invoked are identifiable from their substance; the article numbers as filed are not reliable and have been left out.
- The father’s condition is given as “hypertension” in Sinhala transliteration with “Hypotension” in a parenthetical English gloss. These are opposite conditions, so the filing cannot settle which was meant.
Not reported
Neither filing states the bail conditions sought, whether CIABOC tendered the witness statements it referred to, or how the 3 November ruling interacts with the 6 November remand date if bail is granted. Rajapaksa is separately due before the Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar on 19 November in the Airbus indictment; no filing explains how the two timetables relate.
Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News.