Drug cases account for 70 percent of the reports received by the Government Analyst’s Department, Acting Government Analyst Kamani Perera said, in an assessment of a workload that has become one of the tightest bottlenecks in Sri Lanka’s criminal justice system.
Perera, speaking to News 1st, said the department has given priority to expediting analysis reports for suspects held in remand custody, in order to speed up legal proceedings against them.
Why the reports matter
The Government Analyst’s Department is the state forensic laboratory whose findings courts rely on in narcotics, firearms and homicide cases. Because a prosecution generally cannot proceed until the relevant report reaches court, delays leave unconvicted suspects sitting in remand — a direct contributor to prison overcrowding in a system holding some 39,000 inmates.
That is the reasoning behind the department’s decision to move remand cases up the queue, rather than working through reports in the order received.
Staffing
Asked about the increase in officials employed at the department, Perera said 22 officials were newly recruited as Assistant Government Analysts to the permanent staff of the Drugs Division by February 2026.
A total of 83 officials are currently in service at the Government Analyst’s Department, she said.
Context
The remarks follow a commitment by Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala, who said on Saturday that arrangements had been made to complete 9,000 delayed Government Analyst reports and forward them to the courts within the month. Neither account states how the backlog figure and the department’s current caseload relate to each other.
The share of the department’s work taken up by narcotics also sits alongside a wider policy debate: a government steering council has been examining the death penalty for drug offences, and drug prosecutions make up a substantial part of the court backlog the Justice Ministry has been trying to reduce.
