The Matara Magistrate’s Court issued an open warrant on Tuesday for the immediate arrest of former minister Basil Rajapaksa in the money laundering case arising from the Browns Hill land matter, after he again failed to appear before it.
The order was made on 27 October, Hiru News reported at 3.19 p.m. Colombo time. The filing gives his non-appearance as the sole stated reason for the warrant, and does not say whether any submission was made on his behalf before it was issued.
Hiru describes the instrument as an open warrant (විවෘත වරෙන්තුවක්) and says it is for his arrest “immediately”. It does not define the term or state what distinguishes it from the warrants already outstanding against him, and no other verified newsroom had filed on Tuesday’s order at the time of writing.
This is the third warrant in the same matter
Browns Hill has produced arrest orders before, and the headline on its own does not distinguish them. The sequence in this archive runs:
| Date | What the court did |
|---|---|
| 22 May 2026 | Matara Magistrate’s Court issues an arrest warrant after rejecting submissions about his health; a travel ban is imposed |
| 21 July 2026 | The warrant is reissued after he again fails to appear |
| 18 August 2026 | His bail money is ordered confiscated, and later recovered from his sureties |
| 6 October 2026 | The FCID moves over the land itself; the property is reported seized days later |
| 27 October 2026 | Tuesday’s open warrant |
The May warrant was reported as still in force as recently as 11 October. Why a further warrant was needed on Tuesday is not explained in the filing — whether because the money laundering proceeding is a separate case from the one in which the earlier warrants issued, or because the earlier orders required renewal. Hiru refers specifically to “the money laundering case” (මුදල් විශුද්ධිකරණ නඩුව) relating to the land fraud, which may indicate a distinct proceeding, but the report does not say so.
What the land is
Hiru describes the property as a one-and-a-half-acre coconut land in the Brownshill area of Matara suspected to belong to Rajapaksa. That matches the plot at the centre of this case throughout: an approximately 1.5-acre property on Eliyakanda Road, previously owned by a German national named as Herbert Keller and bought for about Rs. 60 million, according to earlier Daily Mirror reporting recorded in this archive.
Hiru revises its own account of the 6 October order
Tuesday’s filing restates what the court did three weeks ago, and the restatement differs from how the same outlet’s earlier report was read.
Hiru now says the Matara Chief Magistrate’s Court on the 6th issued a prohibition order rendering the land inactive for a period of 14 days — that is, the 14 days attach to the suspension of use itself. On 6 October, Hiru was the only outlet to mention a 14-day period, and this desk read it as a window for rival owners to come forward with claims, a reading recorded at the time as resting on a single source while NewsFirst and the Daily Mirror reported only that suspension was being sought.
On Tuesday’s account the 14 days are the duration of the order, not a claims period. That is Hiru clarifying Hiru, not independent corroboration, and it is noted here as a revision to this desk’s earlier reading rather than as a settled fact. A 14-day order made on 6 October would in any case have lapsed around 20 October, which the filing does not address.
Hiru also attributes the 6 October order to submissions by the Police Financial Crimes Investigation Division, consistent with the earlier reporting.
A note on two titles
Tuesday’s filing calls Rajapaksa the former Economic Development Minister; this desk’s May coverage called him former Finance Minister. He held both portfolios, at different times, and neither description is wrong.
The same filing names the court that issued Tuesday’s warrant as the Matara Magistrate’s Court and the court that made the 6 October order as the Matara Chief Magistrate’s Court. It does not say whether these are the same court.
Not reported
The filing does not say where Rajapaksa is now, whether any step has been taken to execute the warrant, or whether the INTERPOL Blue Notice — described on 6 October as still only being sought, despite a ministerial statement in September that it had issued — has since been granted. It does not say whether a Red Notice, the instrument used to seek detention pending extradition, has been requested.
It does not name the magistrate who issued Tuesday’s warrant, give a next date in the case, or say whether the co-accused named in this matter — Ayoma Galappaththi, a sister of Rajapaksa’s wife, and her husband Tissa Galappaththi — appeared or were affected by the order.
On sourcing: this report rests on a single verified newsroom. A search of the Daily Mirror’s breaking-news listing and of NewsFirst, Daily News, Daily FT, Island, EconomyNext and Colombo Gazette returned no filing on Tuesday’s warrant — only the May, July and October stages already covered here. Ada Derana has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for 44 consecutive days and could not be checked. Readers should treat the order as reported by one outlet until a second confirms it.