Schaffter and Diana

Last week saw determinations by the courts of two long-standing matters that had commanded widespread public interest. The first of these related to the death of Dinesh Schaffter, a leading businessman and the member of a well known business family in Colombo, on the night of December 15, 2022, while under intensive care at the Colombo National Hospital.

The other was the case on whether Diana Gamage, now the State Minister of Tourism, who entered parliament on the national list of the Opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) and subsequently defected to the government taking office as a state minister was entitled to remain a Member of Parliament. This had nothing to do with her defection, but was connected to whether or not she was entitled to sit and vote in parliament on account of her alleged British citizenship.

Schaffter was found last year near dead in his car parked inside the Borella general cemetery. He was trussed up and appeared to have been strangled. The first impression was that this was a high profile murder with no motive clearly established, although there were later reports of traces of cyanide discovered in his body that fueled suicide speculation.

After his remains were buried a few days after his death, it was exhumed some weeks later for further forensic examination by court order and further investigations carried out by an expert panel of five forensic scientists. This panel included university academics in forensic medicine, one serving judicial medical office (JMO) and another who had served in that capacity in Kandy. On the basis of the widely awaited report of this expert panel, Colombo’s additional magistrate held on the basis of the findings of four of the five-member panel that death was due to strangulation – “pressure applied to his neck and face” to use the language of the determination.

Although a death certificate has now been issued, the dissenting opinion within the five-member forensic panel was that this was a “complex suicide” committed by ingesting cyanide while trying to make the death look like murder. Undoubtedly, the way events in this case unfolded was heartbreaking for the late businessman’s family.

His father, Chandra Schaffter, a national cricketer of yesteryear and a guru to the country’s national insurance industry, wrote a heart wrenching letter some months ago appealing to the public for peace to permit the family to grieve. Having met his son hours before he died, Schaffter Snr. wrote “Based on my interaction with him that day, I am certain that Dinesh was not anticipating any danger. So, what followed was a complete shock to all of us. I know he did not have an inkling of the dastardly plot that resulted in his death.”

The magistrate has rightly ordered the police to arrest a suspect/suspects and produce him/them in court. But the way the narrative has been unfolding, there seems to be little hope of that being possible, at least in the short term, unless a dramatic breakthrough materializes. Ordinary people, especially those who read Schaffter Snr.’s latter, would have nothing but sympathy for the businessman’s family.

Quite apart from what his father had to say about him, he appears to have been a most lovable personality. But as we have reported in our news story today, criminal investigators have begun looking for a motive and suspects. How far such investigations would go and whether a conclusive determination will ever be reached will remain an open question.

As far as the Diana Gamage case is concerned, no final determination has yet been made as the present status is that the majority verdict of the three-judge appeal court bench can be can be canvassed before the supreme court. The appellant is already on record saying he will be going before the supreme court.

There has been no detailed reporting of the majority judgment of the President of the Appeal Court, Mr. Nissanka Bandula Karunaratne (with Mr. KKV Swarnadhipathi agreeing) and the dissenting judgment of Mr. MAR Marikar. But these have been published and will no doubt be subject of keen debate and discussion in legal circles. Readers may remember that on an earlier occasion when the case was heard by two judges, Judges Karunaratne and Marikar, the determination was divided and it had to go before a three-judge bench. An application for a five-judge bench was not allowed.

Diana Gamage is, of course, a politician very much in the news not only for her looks. She was accommodated on the SJB national list, for the reasons that Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, when he broke away from Ranil Wickremesinghe and the UNP, did not have a party of his own to field at the parliamentary election of August 2020. He did what has been done before, and will undoubtedly be done again, got control of a party belonging to Gamage on the list of the Election Commission where many ‘three wheeler’ parties are recognized.

Gamage who is on record saying “the SJB belongs to me”, was compensated with a place on that party’s national list. She did not remain long within the fold. Her recent angry exchanges with two fellow MPs, the image of a hand round her neck and being wheeled into the Sri Jayawardnapura Hospital with an orthopedic collar round her neck are too recent to bear repetition. A parliamentary committee is inquiring into that matter. Its determination as well as that of the supreme court on her entitlement to sit in parliament will be both eagerly awaited by the public.