The Supreme Court has dismissed two contempt of court petitions filed against CID Deputy Inspector General Shani Abeysekara, Public Security Ministry Secretary Ravi Seneviratne and Rev. Fr. Cyril Gamini — without taking either of them up for hearing, NewsFirst reported on Monday afternoon.
Both petitions were filed by Shantha Jayatilake, a retired Air Force officer.
What was alleged
The two petitions targeted different documents.
| Petition | Respondents | Alleged contempt |
|---|---|---|
| First | Shani Abeysekara, Ravi Seneviratne | An affidavit the two had previously submitted to the Supreme Court |
| Second | Fr. Cyril Gamini | The contents of a complaint he submitted to the Criminal Investigation Department |
The dismissal is procedural, and that is the point
The court did not hear argument, weigh the allegations and reject them. It ordered both petitions dismissed without being taken up for hearing — a disposal at the threshold.
That is a stronger outcome for the respondents than a dismissal after hearing. It indicates the court found nothing in either petition that warranted the parties being called before it at all. Contempt proceedings in Sri Lanka are initiated at the court’s discretion, and declining to entertain a petition is the ordinary way that discretion is exercised against a complainant.
NewsFirst does not name the bench, give the date the order was made, or say whether costs were awarded.
The docket this sits in
The timing places it a fortnight after a ruling in the same two officers’ favour. On 15 September the Supreme Court held that former IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon and two other officers had acted on a political agenda and violated the fundamental rights of Seneviratne and Abeysekara, ordering that no further action be taken on the CID complaint that had threatened Seneviratne with arrest.
An affidavit filed by the two officers in that fundamental rights application would be the obvious candidate for the document the first petition attacks. NewsFirst does not identify which case the affidavit was filed in, and we have not been able to confirm it — the report says only that it was “previously submitted to the Supreme Court.” The two proceedings should not be assumed to be connected on the strength of their dates alone.
Seneviratne is the civil servant heading the ministry that oversees the police and the CID. Abeysekara, the former CID director, was promoted to Deputy Inspector General in August, backdated to 2020, and leads the CID’s renewed investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks. Both men have been the subject of sustained legal and political pressure since 2020.
Fr. Cyril Gamini Fernando is the media spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Colombo and one of the most persistent public voices pressing for the Easter investigation to continue. He has rejected an out-of-court settlement in a defamation action brought against him by former State Intelligence Service chief Suresh Sallay, and has publicly denied that the Church sought the appointments of Seneviratne and Abeysekara.
Grouping the three men in two petitions filed by the same person aligns the complaint with that axis of the Easter dispute rather than with any single case.
Not reported
Jayatilake’s standing or interest in the matters is not stated, and no report we could find explains why a retired Air Force officer brought the petitions. The full text of the affidavit and of the CID complaint remain unpublished.
Ada Derana also carried the story, but its site returned a CloudFront 403 to every retrieval route we attempted, so we have not been able to use it as a second source.
Update: the bench is named and the threshold reasoning emerges
A Daily Mirror report filed at 5.59pm on Monday closes three of the gaps left open above.
The bench. The petitions were taken up before a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena and Justices Achala Wengappuli and Arjuna Obeyesekere.
The date. The order was made on Monday, September 28 — the same day both outlets filed.
Why it failed at the threshold. The Daily Mirror’s account shows the disposal was not silent. Chief Justice Surasena asked the petitioner to explain how the respondents had committed the alleged offence. The petitioner pointed to the contents of Fr. Cyril Gamini’s CID complaint and to the affidavits filed by Abeysekara and Seneviratne. The court was then informed that the matters referred to in the petitions had already been concluded, and, having considered the facts and circumstances, observed that there was no legal basis to proceed. Both petitions were dismissed at the inception.
That last point is the substantive one. The petitions were not rejected on a defect of form but because the proceedings the disputed documents belonged to were already over — which is consistent with, though it does not prove, the reading above that the affidavit came from the concluded fundamental rights application.
The two outlets describe Abeysekara’s post slightly differently — NewsFirst places him at the Criminal Investigation Department, the Daily Mirror simply as a Deputy Inspector General of Police — and render the petitioner’s name as Jayatilake and Jayathilaka respectively.
