MP Namal Rajapaksa arrived at the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday morning, where the order on his application for bail in the Krrish land transaction case was due to be delivered.
Rajapaksa has been held in remand custody over the matter. Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama fixed Tuesday 3 November for the ruling after hearing submissions from the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC) and from the suspect’s counsel on 28 October, Hiru News reported. A later filing confirmed the member had reached the court.
This desk reported the fixing of the date on 28 October. At that hearing the bail motion was moved by President’s Counsel Ali Sabry, and CIABOC opposed release.
The allegation
The case concerns an alleged bribe said to have been paid to secure the transfer of land at Transworks Square, Colombo Fort, to the Krrish Group for a multi-purpose development project.
The figure is not settled
Tuesday’s Hiru filings put the alleged Krrish bribe at Rs 100 million. This desk’s archive gives Rs 70 million, following a correction made on 28 October after NewsFirst set the two cases side by side in a single report — Rs 100 million for the Airbus indictment, Rs 70 million for the Krrish transaction.
That correction stated that no source had carried Rs 100 million in connection with Krrish. That claim no longer holds: Hiru carries it twice on Tuesday, and the Daily Mirror’s own 28 October filing used the same figure. Our earlier reporting on Janaki Siriwardena’s arrest and the 23 October remand gives Rs 70 million.
Both figures are therefore in circulation across verified newsrooms, and this desk cannot resolve which attaches to the Krrish matter. Neither is asserted here as fact. Two bribery cases against the same defendant, running in two courts in the same period with figures of Rs 70 million and Rs 100 million, is the configuration in which a number migrates between stories — and it appears to have migrated in both directions.
Which case this is
Rajapaksa faces several matters on separate timetables, and the dates do not identify them. This one is the Krrish transaction, before the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court. Separately, he is due before the Hambantota High Court on 16 November in the 2017 port protest case, and before the Permanent High Court Trial-at-Bar on 19 November on the Airbus indictment.
Not yet known
At the time of writing no verified outlet had reported the magistrate’s decision. Neither the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing nor NewsFirst carried the outcome on Tuesday morning. Neither Hiru filing states the bail conditions sought, nor how a grant of bail would interact with the 6 November remand date running in the same matter.
This article will be updated when the order is reported.
