The Balapitiya High Court has sentenced five men to death over the 2007 pole-attack killing of a Bataduwa resident, in one of the largest multi-defendant capital sentences recorded in the southern circuit this year.
Judge Ruchira Weliwatte imposed the death penalty on Friday on Kulappuwawadu Wasantha Jayalath, Kulappuwawadu Pearl Bandula, Kulappuwawadu Nandana Pathmakeerthi, Siddha Marakkala Janaka Nanda Kumara and Hinidumage Lahiru Maduranga, all residents of Bataduwa in Batapola, Meetiyagoda.
The court found that the five had beaten Gusthinna Wadu Manjula to death with poles in the Bataduwa area on or around 29 July 2007. The verdict closes a prosecution that had stretched across nearly 19 years.
The five-accused sentence is the second capital ruling out of Balapitiya High Court in the past month, after a separate bench in April handed down a death sentence to a single accused over the 2008 killing of a Baddegama police constable. The Supreme Court earlier in May also upheld death sentences against four convicts in the 2015 Vidya killing.
Sri Lanka retains the death penalty in law but has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1976.
NewsFirst reported the verdict on Saturday.
