The President of the Court of Appeal has assigned former MP Hirunika Premachandra’s appeal against her three-year prison sentence to a three-judge bench, which will take the case up on 21 January.
The referral follows Tuesday’s divided judgment, when the two judges hearing the appeal could not agree on a determination and sent the matter to the Court of Appeal President for directions.
The appeal was then taken up before Court of Appeal President Rohantha Abeysuriya, who appointed a bench of himself, P. Kumaran Rathnam and Pradeep Hettiarachchi, NewsFirst reported. Spellings of the judges’ names vary between filings.
The two who split now sit with a third
The composition answers a question left open on Tuesday. The bench that deadlocked was the same pairing that had been hearing the appeal since mid-year: the Daily Mirror reported on 6 July 2026 that Justices Kumaratnam and Hettiarachchi had fixed the appeal for argument on 6 August. Rather than replacing them, the Court of Appeal President has added himself to the bench — so the deadlock is to be broken by a third vote, with the original two judges retained.
The conviction
Premachandra was sentenced by the Colombo High Court to three years’ rigorous imprisonment and fined after being convicted on charges including the abduction of a young shop employee in Dematagoda using a Defender vehicle on 21 December 2015, unlawful detention and assault. She is appealing to be acquitted and released from the sentence.
As previously reported, she was convicted on 18 counts relating to the abduction of Amila Priyankara, and was granted bail by the Colombo High Court on 22 July 2024 pending determination of the appeal.
Premachandra, a former United National Party and later Samagi Jana Balawegaya parliamentarian for Colombo, is the daughter of the late politician Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra.
Not reported
The filing does not say whether the new bench will rehear argument in full or decide on the existing record, and it does not address her bail in the interim — though nothing suggests it has been disturbed. It also does not say which way either judge went in Tuesday’s split, or on what grounds. Ada Derana carried the same appointment; this desk could not reach its site to verify the filing independently, and no other verified newsroom had published its own account at the time of writing.
