The Gampaha High Court has sentenced a man to 54 years in prison for the abuse of his own daughter, who was a minor at the time, Hiru News reported on Friday.
The man was the girl’s father and had been charged in connection with her abuse.
A case with around 42 arrests
Police said about 42 suspects were arrested on several occasions in connection with the case. Investigators found that the father was the first to abuse the girl.
The girl was later in her mother’s care, and police said her mother’s partner also abused her, and sold her on to other people.
Other suspects in the case have been indicted separately, and those trials are now being taken up, according to the Bureau for the Prevention of Abuse of Children and Women, the police unit that investigated.
Context
The scale of the arrests is what distinguishes this case from a single-defendant prosecution. The sentence announced on Friday covers the father alone; by the Bureau’s account the remaining prosecutions, involving dozens of defendants, are still working through the courts.
LankaNewz does not publish details that could identify a child who has been abused, and the filing does not name the girl, her family or their locality beyond the court’s jurisdiction.
Not reported
The filing does not give the date of the sentencing hearing, the number or nature of the individual counts, how the 54-year total was arrived at across those counts, or whether any fine or compensation order was made. It does not say how many of the roughly 42 people arrested have been indicted, how many trials remain, or over what period the offences took place. The girl’s present circumstances and care arrangements are not addressed.
Ada Derana has also reported the sentencing, but its site has been returning CloudFront errors to us for several weeks, so we could not verify its publication date and have not cited it. No other verified newsroom had filed at the time of writing.
