Another ruse?

Reading about the indictment for murder brought against Hemasiri Fernando, former Secretary of Defence, and the former IGP, I was tempted to look up a legal dictionary which said that murder is an intentionally committed criminal offence, whereas manslaughter or homicide are offences committed unintentionally causing loss of life.

As a former public officer of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service, I remember a similar charge of intention to commit murder brought against a Minister or his deputy in the 1970s, when Felix Dias Bandaranaike was a senior minister of the Sirima Bandaranaike’s government, over the throwing of a chair by the Minister concerned on a trade unionist Teacher of the Department of Education. The case was thrown out if I remember right, on the ground that there was no such murderous intention on the part of the government politico.

It was pretty obvious then that the charge had been artfully magnified and manipulated to get the case thrown out of court.

Is this another such instance of pulling the wool over the eyes of the public, to forestall the case of charges being levelled against a former President?

KANTO FERNANDO

Pitipana