Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka: The Bench of M.M.A. Gaffoor and K.K. Wickremasinghe, JJ. dismissed the appeal of the accused-appellant who was indicted for committing the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl.
The facts of the case were that the deceased was a fifteen-year-old girl living together with the accused as husband and wife however she was not legally married to the accused. On the day of the incident accused came to the house of his mother with the deceased and after sometime went to accused’s house which was in the same compound. After a short while, the accused had come and told his mother and sister who were in the main house about the incident. The deceased was found hanging in the accused’s house. The testimony of the mother and sister against the accused which were well corroborated were taken into account. The postmortem report revealed that death was due to ligature strangulation. Thereafter for his defense, the accused opted to give a dock statement wherein he stated that a person whom he named was responsible for the death of the deceased. Accused further said the same person had told him to surrender to the Police. This position had never been suggested by any of the prosecution witnesses including the investigating Police Officers thus the dock statement made by the accused was considered as an afterthought and thus the Court rejected the same. The High Court convicted the accused. When this matter came up for argument the counsel for the accused took up several defects in the High Court Trial including that a mere non-confession utterance by the appellant had been converted to a confession statement by the State Counsel thereby denying the accused of a fair trial.
The Court after perusing the case record and the submissions made by both Counsel rejected the submissions made by Counsel for the accused with regard to the above defects highlighted as they had no merit. The Court resonated the opinion of Justice Thilakawardena, in AG v. Sandanam Pitchi Mary Theresa, S.C. Appeal No. 79 of 2008, wherein he stated that “Discrepancies that do not go to the root of the matter and assail the basic version of the witness cannot be given too much importance.” The appeal was thus dismissed. [Ambagahagedara Nimal Ratnayake v. Attorney General’s Department, 2019 SCC OnLine SL CA 3, decided on 01-04-2019]
