SLPP MP Namal Rajapaksa publicly acknowledged on Wednesday that he had visited Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, known as Pillayan, in prison in 2018 and 2019, while disputing the framing offered in court hours earlier that the visits were linked to the Easter Sunday investigation.
“It is no secret that I visited TMVP leader Sivasathurai Chandrakanthan, also known as Pillayan, while he was in prison in 2018/19. In fact, prison records of my visits are very much available,” he said in a statement. “At the time, he was party to the alliance, contesting both the 2015 Presidential Election and the 2018 Local Government Elections.”
The statement responded to the Attorney General’s Department disclosure in the Fort Magistrate’s Court that he, his father Mahinda Rajapaksa, and his uncle Basil Rajapaksa had visited Pillayan at Batticaloa Prison after the April 2019 attacks and promised bail within a week of Gotabaya Rajapaksa assuming the presidency.
Rajapaksa criticised the Criminal Investigation Department’s trip to France to record a statement from Asad Maulana, Pillayan’s former private secretary. “If officers travelled all that way simply to confirm my visit to Pillayan, then it is clearly a waste of public funds,” he said, arguing Pillayan is not currently detained in connection with the Easter case.
He accused the government of “political drama” and said the NPP had offered different narratives on the Easter attacks at different times. “We are ready to face any fair inquiry and will cooperate fully with the CID to clear any doubts openly and transparently.”
The response sidesteps the substantive ASG claim — that the visits carried a bail-within-a-week pledge tied to Gotabaya’s presidency — and addresses only the underlying fact of the visits. The ASG also formally named former intelligence chief Suresh Salley as the operation’s mastermind in the same court session.
