Former Public Security Minister Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekara has sent a letter of demand to The Kingsbury PLC in Colombo seeking Rs. 100 million in damages, alleging that closed-circuit television footage of his visit to the hotel was altered and released online without his consent.
The demand was reported by Hiru News on Friday night. The letter itself is dated 29 October 2026 and is addressed to the hotel’s registered office at No. 48, Janadhipathi Mawatha, Colombo 01.
What the letter alleges
According to the notice, CCTV recorded when Weerasekara visited the hotel on 24 October was edited and put online in a way that created the false impression that he and a Buddhist monk had entered the same hotel room at the same or close to the same time.
The notice says the footage, or still images taken from it, was circulated through a number of Facebook pages and YouTube channels. His lawyers argue that original CCTV under the hotel’s own control was released without the consent of its customer and contrary to any hotel privacy policy, which they describe as a serious matter.
Weerasekara says the episode caused him severe mental distress, damage to his reputation and online harassment.
What he is asking for
The letter asks the hotel to identify those responsible, publicly apologise and take the footage down.
If those demands are not met within seven days, the notice states he will sue for Rs. 100 million over defamation, unjustifiable interference with his privacy and damage to his reputation. It adds that complaints will be made to the police, to the online safety commission and to the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority.
Counting from the letter’s own date, that deadline falls in the first week of November.
Not reported
The Kingsbury has not issued any public response, and none is recorded in the filing. Nothing in the notice identifies who is alleged to have edited the footage, and the allegation that it was manipulated is the position stated in Weerasekara’s letter rather than an established finding. No court case has been filed at this stage — a letter of demand is a pre-litigation step.
At the time of writing, no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had filed on the demand, so the account above rests on a single source.
A note on terminology: Hiru’s English headline describes the step as a “writ of certiorari”. It is not — the document is headed Letter of Demand, a private pre-action notice, while certiorari is a public-law remedy used to quash the decision of a public authority. The two are unrelated.
