Priyasath Dep new Solicitor General

Sandasen Marasinghe

COLOMBO: President’s Counsel Priyasath Dep has been appointed Solicitor General. He was serving as an Additional Solicitor General since 1999.

Dep sworn in as an Attorney-at-Law in October 1976 joined the Attorney General’s Department as a State Counsel in January 1978. He was promoted Senior State Counsel in February 1989 and later appointed Deputy Solicitor General in February 1996. He was appointed Additional Solicitor General in October 1999 and a President’s Counsel in April 2000.

Dep has practised in both criminal and civil. He has conducted prosecutions in the High Court of Colombo and outstation High Courts between 1978 and 1989. Between 1990 and 1997, he appeared for the State and Public Corporations in civil cases in the District Courts and in the Appellate Courts. Since 1997 he was attached to the Criminal Division and among other duties he was engaged in supervising the work of legal officers of the Criminal Division. He regularly appeared in the Supreme Court and in the Court of Appeal in criminal appeals.

Dep obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Development Studies) and a Master of Arts (International Relations) from the University of Colombo. He was a recipient of a scholarship granted by the Netherlands Government and in 1989/90 followed a Post Graduate Diploma Course in International Law at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague, Netherlands.

He was admitted and enroled as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England in 1991. He obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Forensic Sciences and Toxicology from University of Colombo.

He had his education at St Joseph’s College, Colombo.