The Court of Appeal has reduced a 10-year rigorous imprisonment sentence for statutory rape to two years, holding that an offender who was 19 at the time and is now a married father required guidance and rehabilitation rather than a long custodial term.
A two-judge Bench comprising Justices P. Kumararatnam and Pradeep Hettiarachchi delivered the judgment, the Daily Mirror reported on Saturday morning.
The Court said the circumstances warranted an approach focused on the offender’s reformation and rehabilitation. The accused “had just attained adulthood at the time of the incident” and would need guidance, supervision and rehabilitation to become a good parent, rather than punishment that would brand him a criminal.
What the High Court had imposed
The Ampara High Court had convicted the accused on two counts and sentenced him to:
- one year rigorous imprisonment for kidnapping a girl under 16, with a Rs. 20,000 fine
- 10 years rigorous imprisonment for rape, with a Rs. 50,000 fine
- Rs. 300,000 in compensation
The appeal was brought by the accused against the sentence only. He withdrew his appeal against the conviction, so the finding of guilt was never in issue before the appellate Bench.
The Court of Appeal varied the 10-year term to two years but left the fines and the compensation order unchanged. The appeal was formally dismissed, subject to that variation.
The facts the Court worked from
The offence took place in October 2020. The victim had eloped with the accused following a relationship between them, and told the High Court she had voluntarily left home with him and that intercourse occurred once, consensually.
The accused was 19 at the time. By the time he gave evidence in the High Court he was 23, married, and the father of a child aged two and a half.
Under Sri Lankan law consent is immaterial where the complainant is below 16, which is why the conviction stood despite the victim’s evidence.
The legal basis for going below the minimum
The reduction rests on Supreme Court Reference No. 03 of 2008, which held that the mandatory minimum sentence prescribed by Section 364(2)(e) of the Penal Code conflicted with constitutional provisions, and that courts retain judicial discretion to impose an appropriate sentence.
That determination is what allows a sentencing court to go below the statutory floor in a case of this kind. The Bench acknowledged the seriousness of the offence, but weighed against it the accused’s recent attainment of adulthood and the existence of a relationship between the parties.
One discrepancy in the source
The filing describes the victim as being “under 15 years of age” in its opening paragraph, but states later that she was “15 years and nine months old” at the time of the incident. The two cannot both be correct.
The second figure is the one consistent with the rest of the judgment: the companion conviction is for kidnapping a girl under 16, and the statutory threshold engaged by the rape count is 16, not 15. This desk reports the age as 15 years and nine months and flags the opening description as unreliable.
Not reported
No other verified newsroom carried the judgment at the time of writing; the Daily Mirror’s court desk appears to be alone on it. The filing does not give the case number, the date of the judgment, the date of the original conviction, or the time already served — which matters, since a two-year term imposed on a 2020 offence may be substantially or wholly spent. It does not say whether the Attorney-General opposed the reduction or whether the State intends to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, and it records no submission made on the victim’s behalf.
