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VIRAKESARI NEWSPAPER ORDERED TO PAY RUPEES FIVE MILLION TO TULF PRESIDENT ANANDA SANGAREE

By Walter Jayawardhana

Sri Lanka’s leading Tamil daily the Virakesari became guilty of defamation of the senior most Sri Lankan Tamil leader V. Anandasangari and a Colombo judge ordered the newspaper to pay five million Sri Lankan Rupees as damages.

Colombo’s Additional District Judge Priyantha Fernando ordered Virakesari editor V. Devaraj and the paper’s publisher Express newspapers Ceylon Ltd. To pay the Rupees five million damage.
In his order Judge Fernando said the newspaper had carried an article without verifying its authenticity resulting in defamatory damages to the very famous Tamil politician.

Sangaree, who has become the anathema of the Tamil Tigers, in his plaint filed through Dissanayaka Amaratunga Associates charged the article that appeared April 18 2004 , page 4 was defamatory of him.

The defamatory case is only one of many troubles the island nation’s first newspaper established in 1930 had to face in recent years for its alleged bias in favor of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)

Last year the anti LTTE Karuna armed group allegedly took 10,000 copies of the newspaper being transported and burnt them in Batticaloa.

Jeyaraj Fernandopulle , a Minister of the government alleged that the newspaper’s editorials were very unbalanced and said while they condemned government’s air strikes on LTTE military positions they never condemned LTTE attacks on innocent civilians

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