Five suspects discharged in Kadirgamar murder case

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 28 May 2008, 11:33 GMT]
The Colombo Chief Magistrate, Nishantha Kapuarachchi, discharged the five suspects arrested and remanded in connection with the murder of Lakshman Kadirgamar, former Foreign Minister on 12th August 2005 in Colombo, legal sources in Colombo said. The court made the order on the instruction of the Attorney General when four of the five suspects were produced in court Monday from Welikada prison.

The Solicitor General Piyasad Dep, by his letter dated May 5, had advised the Colombo Crime Division (CCD) to release the suspects since the AG would not indict them. CCD already filed charges against the five suspects in the High Court (HC) of Western Province but they were not indicted by the AG before the HC, the court was told, according legal sources.

The names of the discharged four suspects are: Manikkam Tamil Iniyam, Ratnam Janakan, Sivaraja Sivaram, and Kalimuthu Sivakumar. The suspect Aiyar Rajkumar was not produced in court, legal sources said.

Counsel Appathurai Vinayagamoorthy moved court to make an order to the prison authorities to produce his client-suspect Aiyar Rajkumar in court. Prison authorities informed court that there was no suspect in Welikada prison by that name.

Counsel Vinayagamoorthy then brought to the notice of the court that prison authorities had produced the suspect by that name on earlier occasions. Counsel Vinayagamoorthy suggested to court that the suspect would be at Boosa detention centre in the south.

The Magistrate then instructed the CCD to produce the suspect Aiyar Rajkumar immediately before court, legal sources said.

Two of the five suspects were arrested by the CCD for taking photographs of the residence of Lakshman Kadirgamar.