Court extends remand for SLA soldier

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 January 2003, 03:18 GMT]
The Killinochchi Thamileelam court Friday rejected the bail application made on behalf of a soldier of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) arrested by Tiger cadres for straying into the LTTE territory at Manalaru on December 24 last year and ordered remand for another fourteen days, court sources said.

The accused SLA soldier H.G.Wimalakumara was produced in court Friday. Parents of the accused who had come from Matara and representatives of the Sri Lanka Monitoring Commission were allowed to be present in court during the proceedings.

The District Judge of Killinochchi Thamileelam Court, Mr. Thambiraja Senthoor, ordered the accused to be remanded till January 10 when the Thamileelam Crime Detection Bureau first produced him on December 27.

The assigned defence lawyer proficient in Sinhala moved court to release the accused on bail stating that the suspect had accidentally entered the LTTE territory. The defence further submitted to court that the parents of the suspect had come from Matara to see their son.

The prosecuting police officer objected to the bail application stating the suspect had entered the LTTE territory passing the five km no man zone between the SLA defence line and the LTTE defence line. The prosecution further told court that the accused had been arrested when he was five hundred meters inside the LTTE territory with one T 51 rifle and magazine with thirty live bullets.

The prosecution added that under investigation the accused had said that he had entered the territory in order to collect wood apple fruits and to catch some wild fowls His reply had caused suspicion about his movement in the LTTE territory close to Ceylon Theatres farm. The prosecution moved court to order remand of the suspect to conduct further investigation.

The Judge upheld the objection by the prosecution and ordered that the suspect be remanded till January 23 and instructed the Thamileelam police to conduct further investigation into this incident.