Retired Major General Suresh Sallay, the former State Intelligence Service director, was brought to the Permanent Three-Judge High Court on Friday under special Criminal Investigation Department security — to give evidence in the case over the abduction and enforced disappearance of journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda.

He appeared as a witness, not as an accused. Hiru News reports that notices were issued to call the evidence of witness No. 53, investigating officer Premaratne, and witness No. 90, Suresh Sallay — and that Sallay expressed his willingness to give evidence in the case. Evidence was led by Deputy Solicitor General Wasantha Perera for the Attorney General.

Sallay was questioned on army law and various documents of the military intelligence division, and on statements he had previously given about the disappearance, Hiru reports.

NewsFirst reported the same appearance, describing him as brought before the court “to give evidence,” and gives the charge basis: the Attorney General filed the case under the Penal Code against the defendants on several counts, including conspiring with an unidentified group on or about 25 January 2010 to abduct Ekneligoda in the Giritale, Habarana and Kottawa areas with the intention of secretly detaining him.

Why the distinction matters

A headline reading that a former intelligence chief was “produced before” a trial-at-bar invites the inference that he is in the dock. In this case he is not. Hiru’s numbered witness list settles it: Sallay is No. 90 on the prosecution’s own list of witnesses, called on notice, and he consented to testify.

That is worth stating plainly because Sallay is an accused elsewhere. He is named as the third suspect in the reopened Easter Sunday attacks investigation, and it was at a hearing of that case on 3 June that the Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court imposed the overseas travel ban on former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa — the ban Rajapaksa asked the same court to lift on Friday. This desk has also covered his writ petition against detention under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The Easter file and the Ekneligoda file are separate proceedings, and his status differs in each.

The witness who was recalled

The two filings differ on what happened with the other witness, and Hiru’s account is the fuller one.

NewsFirst says Suresh Kumara Sumathipala, the fourth witness, provided testimony. Hiru says the evidence of Sumathipala Suresh Kumara, alias “Murali”, the fourth witness, was recalled — that is, he was brought back to give evidence again rather than testifying for the first time. Hiru also supplies the alias, which NewsFirst omits.

Note the name collision running through Friday’s filings: Suresh Kumara Sumathipala, the fourth witness, and Suresh Sallay, witness No. 90, are different people appearing in the same case on the same day.

The bench is the permanent three-judge High Court comprising Presiding Judge Nayana Seneviratne with Judge Nalin Hewawasam and Judge Lakmali Hewawasam, sitting at 121/1 Wijerama Mawatha, Colombo 7, an address only Hiru gives.

That is the same panel of three judges Chief Justice Preethi Padman Surasena named on 3 May 2026 when he appointed a permanent Trial-at-Bar to the case, replacing the ad-hoc panels that had repeatedly stalled it. Friday’s sitting is that bench, unchanged, five and a half months on.

Ekneligoda, a cartoonist and political analyst with the Lanka eNews website, was abducted on the night of 24 January 2010, two days before that year’s presidential election, and no confirmed information about his fate has ever been disclosed. The charge NewsFirst describes puts the alleged conspiracy “on or about 25 January” — the day after the night of the abduction — and no filing explains the discrepancy between the two dates. The case is one of seven high-profile prosecutions the government pledged to reopen.

Update — what the two witnesses said

A later Hiru filing, published at 4.04 p.m. Colombo time, reports the substance of both appearances.

Murali testified that Ekneligoda had planned to assassinate Mahinda Rajapaksa. Hiru describes the witness as a former member of the LTTE’s intelligence wing, and reports him telling the three-judge bench that Prageeth Ekneligoda had planned to kill Rajapaksa — then the country’s head of state — in a missile attack.

That is an allegation made by one witness under examination in a live trial. It is not a finding of the court, and no filing reports any evidence offered in support of it, any date for the alleged plan, or any response from the prosecution or from Ekneligoda’s family. It should be read as testimony given, not as fact established — and it is testimony about the man the case says was abducted and disappeared, not about any defendant in the dock.

The LTTE-intelligence description is also new. The earlier filing identified the fourth witness only as Sumathipala Suresh Kumara, alias “Murali”, with no account of who he is.

Sallay spoke about the intelligence service. Hiru reports that the former intelligence chief, who is held under detention orders, was produced before the bench to give evidence and there spoke emotionally about the service rendered by the military intelligence service. That is the only characterisation of his evidence any filing offers; what he said about the disappearance itself is still not reported.

The second filing confirms the bench — Presiding Judge Nayana Seneviratne with Judges Nalin Hewawasam and Lakmali Hewawasam — and confirms the sitting as the Colombo permanent three-judge High Court.

Not reported

No filing reports what Sallay said about the disappearance itself, whether he completed his evidence, or whether he is to be recalled. None gives the next trial date. None names the defendants in the dock or says how many there are — all refer only to “the defendants,” though this desk’s earlier reporting records that military intelligence officers are among those charged. None explains why Murali’s evidence was recalled, or on whose application, and none reports whether his account of an assassination plan was the reason. None says what, if anything, was offered to support that account, or whether it was tested in cross-examination. And none says whether witness No. 53, the investigating officer Premaratne, has yet been called.

Sources: NewsFirst, Hiru News (Sinhala), Hiru News — witness testimony (Sinhala).