{"id":108765,"date":"2020-11-17T16:28:49","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T23:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=108765"},"modified":"2020-11-17T16:28:49","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T23:28:49","slug":"appeal-court-finds-wilpattu-rapist-guilty-will-the-ag-direct-the-police-to-file-criminal-charges-against-bathiudeen-and-his-accomplices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/11\/17\/appeal-court-finds-wilpattu-rapist-guilty-will-the-ag-direct-the-police-to-file-criminal-charges-against-bathiudeen-and-his-accomplices\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeal Court Finds Wilpattu Rapist Guilty \u2013 Will the AG Direct the Police to File Criminal Charges Against Bathiudeen and his Accomplices?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>By \u00a0Gandara John\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>In a landmark case, a bench of Sri Lanka\u2019s Court of Appeal found a former Minister, suspected of having close links to\nEaster Bomb terrorist Zaharan, guilty of illegally settling people on State\nLand and raping the Wilpattu Forest. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bathiudeen, presently in remand jail for defrauding State funds,\ncame into prominence recently when his Party members voted with Gota to pass an\nAmendment to the Constitution that would enable American Basil to sit in\nParliament.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The case that was filed against him by an environmental\norganisation was a Civil case and the Court ordered Bathiudeen to make good the\ndamage with his personal funds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Destroying State Land and facilitating squatting on State Land are\ncriminal offences that carry severe punishment for offenders and those abetting\nthe offenders.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is alleged that some Ministers and Government officials,\nabetted Bathiudeen to commit these crimes by way of issuing and acting on\nillegal, gazettes, circulars, certificates etc.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question being bandied around in political and legal circles\nis \u2018Will the AG, reputedly a fiercely independent and honourable man, instruct\nthe Police to indict criminal charges against Bathiudeen and all those who\nallegedly helped Bathiudeen to commit these offences?\u2019&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By \u00a0Gandara John\u00a0 In a landmark case, a bench of Sri Lanka\u2019s Court of Appeal found a former Minister, suspected of having close links to Easter Bomb terrorist Zaharan, guilty of illegally settling people on State Land and raping the Wilpattu Forest. &nbsp; Bathiudeen, presently in remand jail for defrauding State funds, came into prominence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gandara-john"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}