Archives

Appeal Court sets a side life imprisonment term on two

The Court of Appeal has set aside the term of life imprisonment passed on two accused tried under the Offensive Weapons Act holding inter alia that the trial judge had completely violated the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code which requires that a judgement must be delivered within 10 days of conviction.

The Bench comprised Justices Raja Fernando and G.W. Edirisuriya.

Egoda Hewage Gnanawantha and Nammuni Kukas Silva were charged with having caused damage to a property with the use of offensive weapons, under Regulation 24 (1)(A) of the Emergency Regulations read with section 32 of the Penal Code. They were sentenced to life imprisonment on December 14, 2000. Delivering his Judgement, Justice Fernando stated:

"Counsel for the both accused appellants initially submit to Court that according to the journal entries, the judgement of the trial Judge has been received by Court on November 23, 2001 although the judgement is dated December 14, 2000. The conviction and sentence has been imposed on the accused on December 14, 2000, almost 11 months earlier.

The counsel draws the attention of Court to the evidence of the witnesses, where it is categorically stated that there were no light outside the house so as to enable the witnesses to identify the accused who were a distance away.

Further there is no evidence to show that a bomb had been exploded in this incident. Further, according to the witnesses the 1st accused had been at the police station when the complainant went to the Police Station to make a complaint shortly after the incident. However according to the police evidence, both accused had been arrested two days after the incident. Even though according to police evidence the suspects have been arrested two days after the incident, the identification parade was held three months later.

The trial Judge whose judgement is dated December 14, 2000 which was received by the High Court registry on November 23, 2001, does not seem to have referred to any of the items of evidence referred to by the learned counsel appearing for accused-appellants.

The senior State Counsel informs Court that in view of the matters raised by Counsel appearing for accused-appellants, he does not support this conviction or sentence. We are in agreement with the submissions of the Senior State Counsel that on the evidence the judgement of the trial Judge cannot be supported. The trial judge has completely violated the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, wherein it is required that the reasons for the judgement must be delivered within 10 days of the conviction which has now been interpreted by Court to mean within reasonable time.

Accordingly we set aside the conviction and sentence imposed on the accused-appellants by the High Court and acquit them of the charges. The appeal is allowed.

Dr. Ranjit Fernando with S. Munasinghe, S. Manatunga and R. Jayawardena appeared for the accused-appellants.

P. P. Surasena SSC appeared for respondent.

News | Business | Features | Editorial | Security
Politics | World | Letters | Sports | Obituaries |

Produced by Lake House
Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
Comments and suggestions to :Web Manager