Prof S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole
Cowardly newspapers
Newspapers pretending to be guardians of the public good are really cowards and refuse to publish me on this subject. Colombo Telegraph is a stellar exception. Even though writing the true and provable, they say they do not want to be sued for contempt. However, those correctly accused will not dare sue when any lawsuit will prove the article to be true. Today’s Island (05.04.2025) reveals cigarette smuggling and 50 defective nomination papers. But no names!
The Judicial Service Commission and the Attorney General
The JSC and AG are the ultimate guardians of the law. In reality, they guard the crooks from prosecution. I use JSC and AG generically because people change but organizational continuity requires those holding office to be responsible for their predecessors’ action.
The ultimate example is the Chief Justice Sarath Silva who boasted of having done a favour or mistake for Mahinda Rajapaksa through the Hambantota judgement. His two co-justices like puppets signed “I agree” after he did his favour. The two consenting to what Silva now calls his wrong judgement are Justice Shirani Tilakawardena, and Justice N.E. Dissanayake. Tilakawardene, I am ashamed to say, was a Member of the Standing Committee of the Church of Ceylon (Colombo) with me. Vide S.C.(FR) App: No. 387/2005, by Sonali Samarasinghe Wickremetunge.
They are bright times, now, however. A huge charge in the Supreme Court and its judgements is discernible after we got a new government. Suddenly the once-mighty are being sent to jail. Impunity is on the way out although killers of Tamils are still spared. It is I judge the right moment to recanvass issues, but with the caution that the electorate is so fickle, what if the Rajapaksas comeback? It is why the legal system needs to be stabilized, made safe from political influence.
Judge A. Judeson
Judeson has a reputation among Tamil nationalists, making headlines in news sources like Tamil Guardian. During the 2018 Local Government Elections I pulled up some Tamil Congress politicians for holding an election meeting within the Maviddapuram Temple Premises. The next thing I knew, Judeson wrote to the Election Commission an ill-tempered harangue asking them to remove me which power the EC did not have. The Mallakam OIC reported to Judeson that I had been served with summons and I had not come. I complained to the JSC. JSC Inspector Samanthilake was asked to inquire and in his report made adverse findings against Judeson and reported that the Mallakam OIC had untruthfully claimed that summons had been served on me. The JSC went silent.
Honourable Judeson in 2018 was 84th in JSC’s Seniority List, 49th in 2021 and 30th in 2024 What a fellow to do so well in JSC performance assessment!
Jurat by one-time Trincomalee Bar Official Thusyanthan Punithavathi for 3 affirmants Rev. S.R. Thileepan, Rev. V.J. Jeyaseelan and Rev. Ramesh Tharmalingam: No third signature, grammar errors, bad date and no “before me.”
The JSC and District Judge M. Ganesharajah
As Trincomalee DJ Ganesharajah had been stuck at 2nd in the Seniority List. In Trincomalee where the language of Court is Tamil, he lets a particular Sinhalese lawyer serve papers in Sinhalese and refuses to order a Tamil translation and proceeds with judicial orders without a chance for Tamils to respond with a translation. He entertained petitions against my wife for allegedly stealing a motorbike and a three-wheeler from her college where she was principal saying she wrote scurrilous articles about the college. There was no police report; not even a copy of her alleged article. It seemed that a racket was on with the lawyer without a brief, regularly seen at the court entrance like an ambulance chaser.
Ganesharajah moved so fast that my wife’s conviction seemed imminent. At that point, with Dr. Sunil Coorey appearing pro bono, the College President, my wife and I filed a petition at the Court of Appeal asking for three cases Ganesharajah was handing with seeming partiality to be transferred to another judge. A day or two before the case was to be taken up, he wrote to the JSC saying he did not wish to handle the cases and asked that they be transferred to another judge. Two years hence, the JSC has not acted. My wife remains an accused thief.
In the meantime, newspapers reported, Ganesharajah was buzzing around a woman litigant’s house at night and the neighbours caught him and handed him over to the police. He has been interdicted by the JSC which seems more bothered by sexual harassment than judicial corruption such as when Ganesharajah gave a verdict in open court and then altered it in his chambers as lawyers in Trincomalee allege.
I have heard a Magistrate having the following conversation in court: Lawyer: “This was decided in court.” Magistrate: “By whom?” Lawyer: “By Ganesharajah.” Magistrate: “Ah, by him!” Such is the depths to which the JSC has destroyed the reputation of the judiciary.
The Tamil Congress and the AG
On the Election Commission, I had several causes to fault the Tamil Congress and its mayoral candidate V. Manivannan. He made a speech threatening to assault me (Valampuri, and Vaakeesam, 18.01.2018):
One who wrote many different essays in favour of the Tamil National Alliance has been appointed as an administrator in the Elections Commission. His full time service is to figure out what we do and how to stop us. We wish to tell him: Until 10.02.2018 [the LG election date] you do your attacks. On 11.02.2018 attacks on you will begin. You be ready to face them. We are saying this pleasingly with responsibility. If you pull us into dirty work, we too will not let you be.
The EC saw nothing serious and asked me to make a private police complaint if I wished. I did. What followed showed the bizarre nature of the legal system. Lawyers became hostile. When there was a lawyers’ strike, I was not informed by my lawyer who made me come to Jaffna unnecessarily from Colombo. One day she was in court but when my case was called up, she had vanished. When I spoke up on my matter, the Magistrate was brutally harsh, “You cannot speak. Only your lawyer can.” I responded that my lawyer was missing. The Magistrate pointed to one junior fellow among some 8 lawyers standing there accompanying the many who came with Manivannan (who was permitted to appear in his lawyer’s gown and not stand in the cage for the accused). The Magistrate claimed that one of them was my lawyer. I did not know him from Adam and do not know how the judge knew what I did not.
The system was rigged against me. The police asked me to make Manivannan’s speech on 5 CDs. Again, as on many days, the Magistrate was missing and a woman (a Children’s Court Judge) turned up. Though Acting Magistrates usually set only the next date, she threw out my CDs claiming the police had not filed them for a year and it was unfair by the accused! Well-planned, it seemed.
Then the AG played his trump card. He called for my file. Almost 6 years later, he is still studying it. Perhaps he is writing a doctoral thesis on it. Thereafter the Magistrate claimed he cannot set the next date for hearings without my file. Obviously, he has not heard he can ask the AG to send back what he took!
The system is horridly putrid.
Language and the Courts
Precision in language is critical in understanding and implementing our laws. For, appeals will fail if judges use ambiguous language.
My late mother’s teacher was Miss. Muriel Hutchins, BA (Oxon), CMS. Practising for the Prize Giving, the Head Girl gave her draft speech, “I wish to thank [so and so] for gracing this occasion.”
Shot back Miss. Hutchins, “If you wish to thank her, why not simply do that. Say “I thank [so and so] for gracing this occasion.”
OK for a Head Girl but not in a Stay Order from a High Court:
There is a matter to be looked into [sic.] as such it’s my view, I should issue interim orders in terms of prayer [sic.] ‘l’, ‘m’ and ‘n’.
It was the judge’s view that he should do it but like the Head Girl he failed to do it. Such obfuscation seems a pattern. In another case at the same court but under another judge, the order read,
I am inclined to grant interim orders prayed for in prayers (d), (e) and (f) of the Petition against the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Petitioners.
By what he wrote, he was inclined to grant the orders but did not because of some hesitancy!
We cannot work with such obscurantism. I told my counsel that there is no order; that I remain unrestrained. But he felt it was dangerous. Both the cases were ultimately dismissed. I cannot now be faulted for writing this for the edification of the JSC and Courts.
The Dishonest Legal Profession
I often see lawyers lying to court to win, getting the client to put fabrications in an affidavit in English for which the client is now responsible. The lawyer remains unscathed because the lie, though the lawyer’s, is signed by the client.
Slightly differently I have over 10 affidavits from one case (Trinco DC 5744/2022) where three affirmants have deposed through lawyers T. Punithavathi, U.J. Rihana, Manoj Aravind Sebastian and A.A.F. Munaseer. Lawyers jump in and say if the affidavit is defective it is not the lawyer’s (Commissioner of Oath’s) fault. What they say is true if the Affiant lied in the content of his deposition. But when the Commissioner signs at the bottom of what is called a jurat – see a sample in figure – it is lying to court, a brazen untruth, when one of the three affirmants has not taken the oath and it is pretended to court that all three did. Mr. Sebastian has certified an affidavit by three where only one has signed! I am told I should not have published the names. Why not? Do lawyers have impunity when they certify misleading affidavits?
Obviously, the Bar Association and the JSC think lawyers are privileged – little gods – and have not even acknowledged my complaint. Is it any wonder that our legal system is in a royal mess? The JSC and judges who overlook these faults (like Ganesharajah with over 10 affidavits in one case) are at fault; as too the JSC that appoints the lawless as judges and promotes them.
In an interesting Supreme Court case (03.04.2025) challenging the rejection of the Tamil Congress filings for the Point Pedro Pradeshya Sabai, K. Guruparan former Head of Law at Jaffna, appeared for the Petitioners. It turned out that a document not submitted in Jaffna was put to the Supreme Court by Guruparan’s team as a translation of that allegedly submitted. When the fraud was pointed out from the AG’s side, the justices wanted to charge the translator and the one who filed it in SC. They escaped by withdrawing the case. The system always has a back door out for lawyers. Remember that the same party’s mayoral candidate in 2018 forged deeds to prove residency in Jaffna and got away scot-free.
Sayanthan reports that a lawyer (Gautaman) had written three deeds on the same day giving ownership for the same property to three separate individuals. Two more lawyers had been arrested, and the police were readying to arrest three more. In protest, lawyers Guruparan, Thirukumaran (whose close relative forged deeds to show residence in Jaffna), Thavapalan, and Celestine had met President Ranil on 13.02.2024. Ranil then arranged a meeting with AG Sanjay Rajaratnam where they threatened that if the police pursued lawyers engaging in forging deeds, they would subject the police to harsh cross-examination. There has been no response from the police or the AG as to whether they would let off crooked lawyers.
With Guruparan (former Head/Law) and his team protesting police prosecution of lawyers’ corruption, with Reverend Pastors colluding with high law society officials cooking up affidavits claiming affiants signed when thy did not, can we expect an ethical legal protection?
Lawlessness and Origins
Jaffna is really lawless. A brand new van donated to the Nuffield Deaf and Blind school was first used by an unkown church party in Colombo for years before letting the school have it. The Principal who brought Rs. 25 million from Japan has been let go and the money is being used without transparency. That thick-headedness understanding what law and impartiality mean, goes back to the years 2003-2005 when the LTTE went into business and got a bribe to prevent Tamils from voting so Rajapaksa could win.
A teller at Seylan Bank tells me that LTTE businesses would make Rs. 5 million a day and he was asked, however late, not to close the books till the money came in. Those who held this LTTE money are now into hotels, liquor stores, and even a theme park.
A former LTTE mechanic – whom I judge reliable – says with relish that the Swiss LTTE is reorganizing and has an office with 4 or 5 people in Jaffna, tracking the incomes and bank accounts of those who walked off with LTTE money in 2009.
My Hope
The sustenance of Law and Order must be taken out of the hands of the JSC and the AG and put in the hands of a decentralised structure to avoid patronage in corruption as when independent lawyers like Elmore Perera were suspended by a Chief Justice who had no shame in boasting of doing favours.
