Opinion

Murder of Ehelepola family, Bogambara Wewa and Sightings of Wangediya

Published

2 months ago

2026/05/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

Ehelepola Walawwa

Preamble and the Accused

Ehelepola tragedy has twists and turns; I start with the African proverb, “Until lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” In this story, hunters are the Kandy king, his first Adigar Ehelepola, and the British colonial government.

Within a few years of becoming king of Kandy in 1798, Sri Wickrama Rajasingha began to feel his unpopularity spread across the country and right under his nose among the Kandyan elites. He murdered captured British soldiers receiving hospital treatment in Kandy and let Major Davie die in captivity. He executed his Prime Minister, Pilima Talawa Sr., in 1812 for suspicion of colluding with the British, and, as John D’oyly revealed, was envious of the former’s alleged schemes to get his son married to the granddaughter of the late King Kirthi Sri Rajasingha (1747-1782) to establish a blood relationship to royalty.

The king then appointed Ehelepola, nephew of Pilima Talawe as the First Adigar. Continuing his wanton execution regime, he touched a nerve in Kandyans with the sacrilegious act of killing Buddhist monk Moratota Paranatala Unnanse, accused of spying for John Doyly, whom Gananath Obeyesekere called “Master Spy.” The King’s reign was an oppressive, oligarchical system consisting of himself, his family, the Chiefs, and some in the Buddhist sacerdotal fraternity in the Kandyan country.

Sri Wickrama Rajasingha was an illegitimate king, with a dubious claim to a direct royal bloodline, which weakened him as a ruler. As we know now, he was ruling the kingdom with borrowed time. Six months after the Ehelepola killings, he was deposed by the British, the empire-builder with its full power, passion, and double dealings.

The King had an irritable and short-tempered demeanour. In 1816, even as a prisoner of the British being conducted on board HMS Cornwallis, in the morning of the 26th day at sea, William Granville, the British Civil Servant heard him screaming with dreadful passion, hacking and hewing into pieces with a hatchet an extra bedstead in front of his cabin kept for him to sit occasionally. The reason for his fury was that one of his attendants had slept on it the previous night, disgracing his honour!

The Murders

Ehelepola Nilame. Los Angeles
County Museum of Art.

The king was accused of Ehelepola murders, and Ehelepola Adigar stands as an accessory by failing to prevent the crime and willfully refusing to help the victims by abandoning the scene.

Headwinds of the crime started when Ehelepola Adigar, Dissave of Sabaragamuwa, was accused of the stabbing deaths of two koralas, under him. When the king ordered him back to Kandy for questioning, he refused. In May of 1814, the Adigar, fully aware of what the king, with his sinister bearing, would do to his family, sealed their fate by throwing away any chance of saving them, and escaped to Colombo seeking British protection.

The enraged king took hostage Adigar’s wife, Kumarihamy, and her four children, along with a few relatives, until the patriarch’s return. After hearing a rumour that the Adigar was planning to spirit away the family from the prison, the king, breaking principles of elemental justice, decided to put his family to death at a public event.

Ehelepola’s misogynist disposition is evident in an old Ola book, recently found in Padiyapelella. In his Mahanuwara Yugaye Aprakata Withthi by historian Chamikara Pilapitiya includes a statement Ehelepola made right before he returned to Kandy with the British army. He bemoaned the loss of his two children, probably the two sons. He added that they were like his two eyes, and, without them, he asked what the use of titles and a good life, referring to rumors that he was planning to get the kingship with British support. He said no word of sorrow for his wife and two daughters, who perished together with the two sons!

In Interior of Ceylon (1821), John Davy, the British Army Doctor (1816–1820), provided the most accurate description with firsthand information of the beheading of the children and the drowning of their mother. The vengeful king summoned Kumarihamy, her four children – two sons, 11 and 9 years old, a daughter, and a nursing baby, and the son of Adigar’s brother and three women to the execution stage near the Natha and Maha Vishnu devale by the palace.

After analyzing contemporary writings, including D’oyly’s Diary, Gananath Obeyesekere has determined the execution date as May 21, 1814. On this day, executioners brought implements of the crime – a wangediya (rice mortar) and a pestle. King then ordered them to decapitate the children first and place the severed heads in the wangediya. When the elder son Lokubanda dithered, his nine-year-old brother Maddumabanda stepped forward and uttered the now legendary words: “Brother, fear not. Let me show you how to die.”

The wadakayo decapitated the children and put their heads into the wangediya and handed the pestle to the agonizing mother. The king ordered her to pound the heads. If she did not, he threatened with an ultimatum – banishment in marriage to Rodiyas, the untouchables in the country, an unfathomable humiliation to her clan. Trusting it would benefit her husband, Kumarihamy declared she would do the unthinkable. With surprising courage, she began to pound the lifeless heads of her children. Some watching this catastrophe wailed, in silence, like driftwood on a deserted shore. A Chief fainted.

Henry Marshall, Surgeon of the British Forces (1808–1821), tells of the perfidious role of one Kandyan Chief who was present that day. When the king ordered the mother to pound the heads in the mortar, Kumarihamy first wavered. The Chief, who was a relative of her husband and supervised the execution, asked her to accept the king’s terms and save the family from the disgrace of living with a Rodiya clan. She did not require such encouragement. With her children slaughtered, soon to face the same fate herself, the only thing left to save was her self-serving husband and his malicious treachery for abandoning them, which she was probably not aware of at the time.

After listening to an eyewitness account, Major Forbes (1840) described the “fortitude and propriety of her conduct” by going through the “most awful scene to which any mother was ever subjected.”

Afterward, the wadakayo and slave women in the palace, carrying the remains of the children, led Kumarihamy and three women to the Bogambara Wewa, which the king could see from the palace.

Six months later, Governor Robert Brownrigg would write what happened next. The “woman herself and three more females, whose limbs being bound, and a heavy stone tied round the neck of each, they were thrown into a lake and drowned.”

King’s retributive justice regime crossed the boundaries of the 32-punishment realm under the murky and ancient Laws of Manu and Kandyan Code of Honor. Pounding heads of decapitated children in wangediya was not in those codes. For the king, it was a theater of death to warn anyone who dared to cross his path. In Discipline and Punishment: Birth of Prisons (1977, 1995), Michel Foucault wrote that such exhibitionist punishments as “the theatrical representation of pain.” But the deposed king, while aboard HMS Cornwallis, placed the blame on Kandyan laws in general, asking William Granville, “Did I make those Laws?”

Interestingly, in The Doomed King: A Requiem for Sri Wickrama Rajasingha (2017), Gananath Obeyesekere, with flimsy evidence, rules out Bogambara Wewa as the site of the drowning. He calls it a myth developed in popular stories like Purana Ehelepola Hatana, invented in the low country. He calls some informants of early writers of the Ehelepola story as “inventive mills, overloaded with falsities,” and no British account exists of Bogambara as the lake where the tragedy took place! But two decades before Purana Ehelepola Hatana, L. De Bussche wrote in Letters on Ceylon (1817) that the dead family was cast into the lower lake of Kandy. Davy was more specific. He wrote in 1821 that the women were “led to the little tank in the immediate neighborhood of Kandy called Bogambarawave [sic] and drowned.”

The alternative location Obeyesekere provides is another smaller tank north end of the city, Borawewa, near the present-day Katugastota railway tunnel. It was also closer to the Asgiriya Temple and the Royal Burial grounds, making it unlikely the king would execute prisoners and dump the bodies close to such sacred places. Obeyesekere seems to disregard Adigar himself, and Dissave of Wellassa, other Chiefs and eyewitnesses still living in Kandy who provided firsthand information to Davy and Henry Marshall.

Bogambara Wewa – The Place

Bogambara Wewa (1796–1820). Green Howards Regimental Museum, London, reproduced in Mahanuwara Yugaye Aprakata Vitti (II) by Chamikara Pilapitiya (2018).

This Wewa, also known as Palledeniya Wewa, is believed to have been built by Rajasingha II (1635–1687). Robert Knox wrote in 1681 that the king made a bank of earth across a valley, far above a cable’s length (200m) and four fathoms high. To prevent erosion, builders made a ralapanawa (revetement) along the inner slope of the bund. He had a “banquetting house about a musket-shot from his palace” [sic] on a little hill by this pond.

In the stylish praise poem Parangi Hatana (c.1642), Bogambara Wewa is likened to the Buddhist cosmic lake Anotatta. Although Kandy Lake looks dandy, the former, with a storied past and the memory of its sepulchral encounter with the Ehelepola heartbreak, was entrenched in the public pantheon of city’s aesthetics.

When measured against the Kandy maps of Lt. Col. Henry Evatt (1768–1851) of Royal Engineers in 1816 reproduced in Nihal Karunaratna’s From Governor’s Pavilion to President’s Pavilion, and in Davy’s in 1821, this bund appears to cross the narrow valley separating Bahirawakanda range between the Police Station and a projection of the Hantana range behind the Education Office near the Railway station. Furthermore, the painting Bogambara Wewa (c. 1796–1820) shown in the image clearly shows a man and a boy walking on the bund of the wewa running in the direction where, in the distance, the distinctive summit of Hantana range is visible. The artist drew it looking towards the hospital, standing on the Pushpadana College slope of Bahirawakanda, behind the police station.

In 1817, De Bussche wrote that this Wewa covered about 6 or 8 acres. Contemporary maps show it occupied the general area bordered by sections of present-day streets named Colombo, Dalada, Yatinuwara, and the Police Station, and the elevated land where the now-decommissioned Prison Complex stands, and the Bund of the Kandy Lake. Except for a few ephemeral ponds scattered along the foot of the hills in the west of the valley, this Wewa remained the main source of water for the city until the Kandy Lake came on board in 1812.

Both lakes were fed by streams originating from Dunumadalawa forest on hills bordering the south side of the city and from Udawattakele in the North. It was unlikely the palace used water from the Bogambara Wewa since it was located uphill from the Wewa. However, as Knox wrote 135 years earlier, the king had water brought to the palace in ditches cut on mountain sides in the North and East and stored in “little ponds made with lime and stone and full of fish,” probably a well and a pond near the palace. One such pond is seen east of the Kundasale road, current Malabar Street, east of Maligawa, on the Dutch Map of 1766, reproduced in Aprakata Vitti. The 1816 map signed by Henry Evatt of the Royal Engineers shows a ditch originating from Kandy Lake to the moat in front of the palace. It then curves West, and goes North parallel to Trincomalee Street. On this map, Bogambara Wewa turns to the south and tapers off as a thin strip parallel to Old Colombo Road, the present-day Peradeniya Road.

Kandy was topographically too compact, surrounded by hills and two lakes in the middle. The area occupied by the Bogambara Wewa and fields below was the only direction the city could expand. Thus, after the British occupied it in 1815, one of their first tasks was to drain it to create more land.

The ensuing building boom in the city began soon. When Davy came to Kandy in 1817, Bogambara Wewa had already been drained. So, he wrote the city “standing on the border of an artificial lake made by the last king,” unquestionably referring to Kandy Lake (Kiri Muhuda). A few years later, Governor Edward Barnes (1824–1831) rode with Rev. Reginald Heber in 1825, proudly showing off another construction project a kilometer from the Kandy Lake – the 500-foot-long tunnel through the Aniwatta hills, a shortcut to the ferry at Halloluwa on the Mahaweli River. Building of the Pavilion (Governor’s Mansion) started around 1826 during Governor Barnes’ tenure.

Last Tango of the King and Adigar

On January 10, 1815, Brownrigg declared war on the Kandyan kingdom. On February 11, eight months after the Ehelepola executions, the king fled Kandy. On the 12th, Major Willerman entered the city, followed by Governor Brownrigg on the 14th. Unlike later in 1819, when the Governor, as the new Lord of the land, returned to Kandy with Davy, on this inaugural day of entry, there was no pomp and pageantry with arches of white olas (gokkola) to receive him along the road from Gannoruwa. Immediately after, Ehelepola entered Kandy with Major Hook and joined Lieutenant Mylius and Ekneligoda pursuing the killer of his family. On February 18, they arrested the king and his family in a house near Medamahanuwara. The British escorted the king to Colombo, and 11 months later, banished him and his entourage to Vellore. He died there in 1832, aged 52.

To mollify the feared tempest of emotions in Kandyan people after deposing the king and ending Sinhala sovereignty, Governor Robert Brownrigg wrote in the official declaration to the Chiefs, reminding them of the king’s “bold contempt of every principle of justice, setting at nought all known grounds of punishment, dispensing with the necessity of accusation, and choosing for its victims helpless females uncharged with any offence, and infants incapable of crime.”

Two weeks after signing the Kandyan Convention, even before formal religious services for his family, Ehelepola informed the Governor that he planned to marry Pilima Talawe Jr.’s sister (widow of Migastenna Adigar) and asked for financial assistance for the wedding. Then, in April 1815, with wounded pride after being sidelined by the British, Adigar gave a mataka dana to 20 monks in memory of his family. His fantasy of becoming the “Deveni Rajjuruwo” did not materialize. Instead, the British gave him the feel-good title of “Friend of the British Government.” In 1818, the “friends” took him into custody. He was never charged but kept in confinement in Colombo. In 1825, he was banished to Mauritius and died in 1829.

Gananath Obeyesekere wrote that when Ehelepola was banished to Mauritius, Sinhala power was lost. Six decades after Adigar’s death, Lawrie wrote that the Ehelepola family line was extinct.

But the Adigar left it to history to judge what a cowardly and callous patriarch he was, having intentionally allowed his wife and children to perish at the hands of a roguish king’s executioners.

Sightings of Wangediya

After the bodies and implements used in the executions disappeared in the watery grave, the mood of the thickly knitted social, cultural, and superstition pathologies of Kandyans undoubtedly prevented any chance of naturalizing the wangediya, by saving it as a household item, or relic of the Ehelepola saga. It was a heartbreak and a cultural shock, painful, grisly, to give this object of murder a place within a residential confine.

But nine decades later, the first written account of the rice mortar used in the killings appears in A.C. Lawrie’s 1896 Gazetteer of the Central Province (Vol. I). He refers to the Kandy DC case number 30962, where a Malay named Sadim Kumba had stated to the Temple Land Commissioner that, in 1843, on land close to the new police station, he saw the stone trough used in the Ehelepola killings, and, in 1858, it was in the Kandy Pavilion.

This episode seems to have continued later with the alleged involvement in it of a T.B. Paranathala. In 1895, he was a Clerk in the Kandy District Court and was appointed as an English-speaking Special Juror (Gov. Gazette of 1895, Part II, p. 43). He probably had come across Kumba’s evidence, and, knowing its historical value, could have related it to Lawrie, who was a judge in Kandy at the time and working on the Gazetteer, which came out a year later.

When the construction of the police station began around 1843, workers moved a lot of earth in and out of the adjoining empty lake bed and its shoreline, and that it is possible to expect the chance of stumbling upon items buried in the former lake floor reappearing.

Sadim Kumba may have been privy to this information for two reasons. He was probably either part of the construction crew on the police station project or, as a boy growing up in the city, may have joined the crowd that followed the Ehelepola ladies on their last journey and saw the spot where wangediya was rolled down the bund.

If what Kumba saw is true, after the way the city cried seeing the executions, and as Brownrigg wrote then that Sinhalese are a “Superstitious Race,” it is incomprehensible that any sane person would take home a bloodied wangediya.

Thus, all physical evidence of the bloody Ehelepola episode, too, remained buried in the watery grave. Therefore, it was not until three decades after the wewa was drained that the British had any contact with what was buried in the lake floor, when wangediya surfaced perforce during grading work on the new police station site.

The British also feared that if remains of his family were to resurface, Ehelepola Adigar, remarried and living comfortably in retirement, but still a formidable character in Kandyan affairs with the title of Maha Nilame, though under a cloud of suspicion, would be upset, and create political instability by regrouping friends to take retribution against the chiefs who sided with the king.

With the scars of the 1818 revolt still in mind, following the 1843 discovery, the British would strategically remove the wangediya to the Pavilion, away from the public eye to prevent rekindling of sentiments among the Kandyans until after 1858, when it disappeared from the pavilion.

However, Chamika Pilapitiya, who inspected ola manuscripts and listened to oral histories in Kandyan country, had shared new insights into the wangediya saga with me. According to him it was found in an Ala Kola Landa (shrub land). A Muhandiram in a Malay soldier phalanx then took possession of it, washed, and used it at his home. His son Cader, who inherited it, sold it to a T. B. Paranathala Nilame. In 1929, it changed hands again, this time to Dr. J. W. Artigala, as stated by M. Malius de Silva.

If this story holds true, in three instances starting from 1843, three generations of Malay families – Kumba, Malay Muhandiram, and his son Cader in Kandy – were in contact with the wangediya in some form or another until early 20^th Century, when it changed hands with Paranathala.

In conclusion, I implore scholars at the National Museum, Kandy Museum, and Ehelepola Museum to follow up on this lost trail. Because this wangediya is the only object now existing out here to have had contact with, and heard cries of, the eponymous family 211 years ago at Deva Sanhide, a stone’s throw from Ehelepola residence. If the museum can secure it, it is a solemn and endearing gesture to this family, now only admired as wax figures, standing in silence, unable to tell their story.

Only then can we write the last coda for the Ehelepola Requiem.

Lokubanda Tillakaratne writes about the Ethnography of Nuwarakalaviya.

by Lokubanda
Tillakaratne

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Opinion

Bleeding Treasury: Multi-billion rupee liquor sticker scam and urgent need for systemic reform

Published

23 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Prof. Asoka. S. Seneviratne

For a nation navigating the perilous waters of economic recovery, fiscal discipline is not a mere bureaucratic preference, it is a matter of absolute national survival. Every single rupee leaked from the state Treasury directly compromises public services, infrastructure, and the socioeconomic welfare of millions of citizens. Yet, while the public bears the burden of high taxation, a monumental revenue hemorrhage has been silently occurring at the heart of the state’s revenue framework.

The security sticker system, ironically introduced by the Department of Excise to curb tax evasion and regulate alcohol production, has evolved into an unprecedented conduit for systemic fraud. Recent disclosures by the Parliamentary Committee on Public Finance (COPF) and the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) have laid bare a terrifying reality: a multi-billion rupee scam that has starved the state treasury of critical revenue while enriching an entrenched network of colluding officials, foreign contractors, and unscrupulous local distilleries. This article deconstructs the anatomy of this institutional disaster, exposes those who turned a blind eye, and outlines the radical legislative and structural overhaul required to permanently safeguard our national revenue.

Shocking Scale of Treasury Revenue Leakage

The financial dimensions of the liquor security sticker fraud are staggering. According to parliamentary oversight committee revelations, the calculated revenue leakage resulting from the circulation of counterfeit and illegally diverted genuine security stamps has reached an estimated tens of billions of rupees annually. To contextualize this loss for the public, legislative watchdogs noted that the volume of state funds evaporating through this single loophole is equivalent to financing multiple massive national health infrastructure projects on the scale of the Suwaseriya ambulance service.

When an illicitly produced or unrecorded bottle of liquor enters the formal retail supply chain bearing a compromised sticker, the treasury loses the entirety of the heavy excise duty levied on it. For every bottle of standard spirits pushed through this parallel economy, thousands of rupees bypass the state completely and flow straight into the pockets of criminals. This is not a minor leak; it is a macroeconomic catastrophe.

The Anatomy of an Exploitative Procurement Blueprint

The foundation of this multi-billion rupee hemorrhage was laid not in illicit distilleries, but within the fine print of a deeply compromised state procurement contract. The state entered into a long-term agreement with an external vendor, Madras Security Printers (MSP), to supply physical tax stamps and digital authentication features. Under the terms of this active contract, which runs until January 2, 2027, the state has been paying an inflated rate of approximately US$ 7.99 per 1,000 digital markings—inclusive of port and customs levies.

The technical absurdity of this arrangement was laid bare by COPF: over 80% of local alcohol manufacturers have transitioned away from physical paper stickers to digital markings printed directly onto bottles during high-speed production. Despite the total elimination of physical paper, printing, and shipping costs, the state continues to pay the maximum contract rate for a digital label that inherently costs fractions of a single cent to generate. The treasury is effectively subsidizing an extortionate profit margin for an external vendor under the guise of security procurement.

Deliberate Inaction: Who Ignored Warning Signs?

A fraud of this magnitude cannot survive in a vacuum; it requires the oxygen of institutional indifference. Multiple administrative layers systematically ignored glaring red flags for years. When the initial procurement process was floated, the Presidential Secretariat’s Procurement Appeal Board intercepted the project and ordered a complete recall due to glaring technical and procedural irregularities. Yet, administrative bodies willfully bypassed these warnings, re-tendering and locking the state into a contract with the exact same questionable entity.

Furthermore, international watchdogs and civil society groups had repeatedly raised alarms regarding the specific foreign contractor’s operational history, citing severe software manipulation disputes, security breaches, and counterfeit controversies in developing nations such as Kenya, South Sudan, and Bangladesh. By turning a blind eye to these verified international precedents, the high-level decision-makers who finalized this framework effectively left the keys to Sri Lanka’s revenue vault in compromised hands.

The primary regulatory bulwark against liquor tax evasion is the Department of Excise, yet its leadership presided over a total collapse of operational oversight. In an era dominated by rapid technological advancement, oversight committees exposed a staggering vulnerability: the Excise Department completely lacked an integrated, automated backend database system to cross-reference and validate the serial numbers of stamps issued.

By keeping the monitoring framework fundamentally manual, rudimentary, and disconnected, the department created the perfect blind spot. Even worse, the physical QR codes printed on the labels were found to be non-functional for field verification by standard smartphones, making point-of-sale authentication an impossibility. This technical failure ensured that whether a sticker was poorly counterfeited or illicitly leaked from an official batch, it could circulate in retail outlets with complete impunity.

Systemic Inside Collusion and Forensic Truth

Recent law enforcement interventions have shattered the narrative that this scam is merely the work of isolated, low-level bootleggers. Following extensive raids conducted by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at illicit distribution hubs, such as the massive bust in Malabe where thousands of liters of untaxed alcohol were seized, forensic teams uncovered a dark truth. Many of the “fake” security stamps affixed to the illegal bottles were not counterfeits at all; they were authentic, officially generated high-security labels.

Arrested suspects and trade union whistleblowers have detailed a deeply entrenched criminal nexus inside the regulatory apparatus. Corrupt excise officials reportedly coordinated directly with sub-agents to divert genuine sticker batches straight into illicit blending plants. There are even documented allegations of senior executives actively calling field teams to abort ongoing raids on compromised retail outlets, and in some cases, transporting seized illicit stocks into regional offices to manually paste genuine stickers after the fact to contaminate legal evidence.

Abolishing the Corrupt “Spot Fine” Loophole

For decades, the wealthy masterminds behind revenue fraud have exploited a massive legal loophole embedded within antiquated sections of the Excise Ordinance: the compounding of offenses via “spot fines.” Under this archaic system, when a prominent distillery or major retail distributor is caught manufacturing or selling untaxed liquor with fraudulent stamps, the department frequently settles the matter quietly behind closed doors through an administrative fine.

This spot fine framework must be completely and unconditionally abolished. It strips the judicial system of its jurisdiction and allows corporate criminals to view state penalties as a minor, predictable cost of doing business. A multi-billion rupee assault on the state treasury cannot be settled with an administrative slap on the wrist. Every instance of sticker fraud must be automatically escalated to the Attorney General’s Department for mandatory criminal prosecution, eliminating the arbitrary discretionary powers currently weaponized by corrupt bureaucrats to shield their corporate conspirators.

A Mandate for Drastic Punishments: Confiscation and Mandatory Prison

To break the back of these deeply entrenched syndicates, the state must introduce an overwhelming “fear factor” into the law. Populist rhetoric and minor financial penalties have failed. The legislative framework governing both the illicit liquor industry and the narcotics trade must be overhauled to introduce draconian, non-negotiable statutory punishments (see graph 1).

When an illicit operation is raided, the state should not wait for a decade of exhausting litigation to freeze assets. The law must allow for the immediate, on-the-spot physical confiscation of all manufacturing infrastructure, land, distribution vehicles, and liquid capital involved in the crime. Combining this immediate economic destruction with a mandatory 20-year minimum prison sentence will fundamentally alter the risk-reward calculus for these criminal syndicates.

It is essential that the above-mentioned penalties be imposed on those who possess illegal firearms and on individuals involved in their unlawful use, possession, or distribution.

Tracing the Spoils: Wealth Investigations and Absolute Asset Forfeiture

The corporate directors, high-ranking state officials, and external collaborators who orchestrated this scam did so driven by unadulterated greed, funneling their illicit gains into luxury real estate, high-end vehicle fleets, and hidden offshore accounts. True justice demands that the prosecution extend far beyond the physical boundaries of the distilleries.

Under the Prevention of Corruption Act and modern anti-money laundering statutes, the state must launch aggressive, retroactive wealth investigations into every single public official, technical evaluation committee member, and excise executive associated with the liquor sticker procurement and enforcement timeline. If an official’s lifestyle, property holdings, or family assets fail to align with their legitimate state-salaried income, those assets must be frozen under public property laws and permanently forfeited to the treasury. Jail time is insufficient if the perpetrator is allowed to return to a hoard of hidden wealth upon release.

Global Best Practices

The systemic vulnerabilities paralysing Sri Lanka’s revenue collection are entirely preventable, as demonstrated by the stringent protocols enforced in developed jurisdictions. Countries like the United Kingdom, Germany, and Singapore do not rely on disconnected, manual validation systems or unchecked external monopolies to collect excise duties.

* Integrated Digital Traceability:

Developed nations deploy advanced, state-owned encrypted track-and-trace networks. Every bottle is assigned a unique, cryptographically secure digital identifier at the moment of manufacture, which is fed directly into a centralized blockchain or real-time ledger managed directly by the state’s central revenue authority, completely bypassing third-party contractors.

* Zero-Tolerance Enforcement Models:

In these jurisdictions, the discovery of a single unrecorded or falsely authenticated product results in the immediate, automated shutdown of the entire facility, multi-million dollar corporate forfeitures, and immediate criminal indictments for corporate directors.

* Independent Oversight:

Revenue departments are audited by completely independent anti-corruption bodies operating outside the ministry’s hierarchy, rendering internal bureaucratic cover-ups virtually impossible.

Uplifting Excise Department:

Architecture of True System Change

A genuine “system change” requires that we simultaneously clean out corruption and completely modernise our institutional infrastructure. The Department of Excise must undergo (i) a comprehensive operational evolution, (ii) matching the standards of modern global revenue authorities.

This transformation must begin with complete digitalisation. The entire department must be integrated into (i) a single Revenue Administration System, (ii) creating a real-time, (iii) transparent data link between the manufacturer, (iv) the customs point, (v) the department’s operations room, and (vi) the Inland Revenue Department. Field officers must be equipped with secure, state-encrypted mobile devices capable of instantly validating digital bottle markings on retail shelves. Furthermore, the human resource structure must be professionalized—merit-based recruitment, independent performance scorecards, and high technical qualifications must completely replace political appointments and arbitrary promotions, building an institution where integrity is structurally guaranteed.

The multi-billion rupee liquor security sticker scam is a stark warning of the catastrophic dangers of institutional decay. It is a textbook case of how flawed procurement, technical loopholes, and insider collusion can combine to systematically drain the lifeblood of our national economy. Sri Lanka can no longer afford to sustain these parallel criminal economies while honest citizens bear the brunt of national recovery.

The upcoming expiration of the current supplier contract on January 2, 2027, presents a critical, unmissable window for absolute reform. The government must seize this moment to dismantle the failed physical sticker framework, bypass exploitative contractor monopolies, and transition to a state-owned, transparent digital tracking architecture. Simultaneously, the legal system must act with uncompromising severity—abolishing spot fines, enacting mandatory 20-year prison sentences, and aggressively liquidating the assets of every official and corporate executive who participated in this betrayal of public trust. The eyes of the nation are wide open, and the demand for real, structural accountability can no longer be ignored.

(The writer served as the Special Adviser to the Office of the President of Namibia from 2006 to 2012 and was a Senior Consultant with the UNDP for 20 years. He was a senior economist with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (1972-1993). He can be reached at asoka.seneviratne@gmail.com.)

Opinion

Can Sri Lankans do economics?

Published

23 hours ago

2026/07/23

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Shiran Illanperuma

Back in 2022, when the Sri Lankan economy was circling the drain, the economics establishment used the term ‘voodoo economics’ to describe policies such as the 2019 tax cuts and the Central Bank financing of the budget deficit – what is popularly called money printing – which were considered to be the proximate causes of the crisis.

In the English language, the term ‘voodoo’ is synonymous with savagery and superstition – it evokes imagery of dark-skinned natives dancing around a bonfire, performing irrational rituals. This is an imagery we have learned from Hollywood and Western media. In fact, the word voodoo is steeped in a racist and colonial history.

Voodoo is an English corruption of the word vodun, which means ‘spirit’ or ‘deity’. It may be similar to the Sinhala word yaksha or yaka. During colonialism, Europeans enslaved millions of West Africans and brought them to the Caribbean to work on sugar plantations. Their labour provided the finances for the Industrial Revolution.

These slaves – from the Fon, Ewe, Yoruba, and Kongo peoples of Africa – had their own indigenous spiritual and philosophical systems. Even as slavery dehumanised them, they held on to their beliefs in whatever small ways they could. Many camouflaged their gods and beliefs through Catholic saints and imagery. Throughout the African diaspora, especially in places like Haiti, this belief system became known as voodoo.

Think of that history next time you hear the term voodoo economics. Remember that plantations came to Sri Lanka after slavery was outlawed in the Caribbean. But in fact, the labour practices in Sri Lankan and Caribbean plantations were not that different. The treatment of the indigenous peasants in the process of land acquisition, was not that different. Voodoo is, in some way, part of our history too.

Mainstream Economics Miseducation

Economists tell us that the cause of the 2022 crisis was that the people were deceived by voodoo economics. This is not to defend the short-sighted economic policies of that government, but to point out that the longer-term structural crisis of Sri Lanka’s colonial economy has been ignored. The spectre of voodoo economics became a convenient way to discredit anything that challenged the cookie-cutter prescriptions of neoclassical economics.

In a sense, it was the economics establishment’s way of absolving itself from blame – it is not mainstream economics education, but the lack of it, that is to blame. The solution was not to change the prescription but to increase the dosage.

Starting this year, the Ministry of Education plans to roll out a syllabus on Entrepreneurship and Financial Literacy from Grades 6 to 11. The syllabus is about personal budgeting, digital banking, tax literacy, and micro-business management. It is basically a self-help manual. There is nothing in this syllabus about production.

What are the economics of the production of rice, our national staple? What are the economics of the garment sector’s supply chains. How are labour contracts between workers and employers negotiated? These are not questions the syllabus is interested in. The economy as a social process, and a system of social relations, does not exist. We are all entrepreneurs in waiting.

Similarly, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka has a Financial Literacy Roadmap, which is based on a Financial Literacy Survey. According to the survey, only 58% of Sri Lankans are financially literate. That implies that 42% of Sri Lankans are financially illiterate. It’s a polite way of saying they are stupid, uneducated, and irresponsible. It is also a subtle way of placing personal blame for structural issues. Why are you poor? Well obviously, it’s because you have misbehaved, you have been irresponsible.

What mainstream economics tells people about their poverty is not so different from what the IMF, the World Bank, and the industrialised countries tell the poorer nations. You are in debt because you have misbehaved, taxed too little, and printed too much money. You have been corrupt – as if there is no corruption in the United States, the European Union, and Japan.

It’s a strange assertion. Last year, the United Nations Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published landmark report titled ‘World of Debt’. Consider the following statistics:1

1. Public debt in developing countries is growing at twice the speed as developed countries.

2. Borrowing costs are 2 to 5 times higher for developing countries than developed ones.

3. 3.4 billion people, across 46 developing countries, live under governments that spend more on interest payments than on healthcare and education (Sri Lanka is one of those countries – around 50% of the government’s budget is for debt servicing).

Is it feasible and rational that all these 3.4 billion people have been plunged into debt because of irresponsibility and corruption? Is it a strange coincidence that all these 3.4 billion happen to be black and brown people in the Global South? Or, is there something more fundamentally wrong with the structure of the global economy? Is there a historical legacy that has not yet been overcome?

Reclaiming Sri Lankan Economics

The year 2025 marked 75 years since the birth of modern Sri Lankan economics. Not a single economics department in this country, not a single professional or students association, celebrated this milestone. It is not something that is memorialised or written in history books.

To explain why 2025 should be considered the 75^th anniversary of Sri Lankan economics, let us first revisit that conjuncture:

* In 1948, Sri Lanka received ‘flag independence’, graduating from British colony to dominion status.

* In 1949, the Gal Oya project, the first major post-independence infrastructure project, began. The contract for that was awarded to an Idaho-based US company called Morrison-Knudsen.

* Also in 1949, US economist John Exter wrote a report which was tabled in parliament and led to the creation of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.

Exter himself became the first governor of the central bank.

· In 1950, the Sri Lankan rupee was devalued 30% against the US dollar and the CBSL began its operations.

· Also in 1950, Ceylon joined the IMF and World Bank – two organisations headquartered in Washington DC, whose policies are directed by the US Treasury Department.

In fact, what we call independence was actually a handover from the English to the US. Colonialism was replaced by what Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, called neocolonialism – a system of indirect control using primarily economic rather than political and military means.

It is in this milieu that, in 1950, Sri Lanka’s first economics journal was published – the Ceylon Economist. It was an attempt by the first generation of the Ceylonese intellectuals to find solutions to our own economics problems based on our own analysis of our conditions. Sadly, many of our own university professors and students hardly reference these giants, or that journal.

The contributors to the Ceylon Economist included figures such as F. R. Jayasuriya, G.V.S. De Silva, N. M. Perera, P. Kandiah, Gamani Corea, S.A. Wickramasinghe, S.B.D. De Silva, Philip Gunawardena, and others. These individuals were not simply academicians looking to publish papers or gain tenure. They were movement leaders and institutionalists, steeped in practical action. They were committed to building up a nation from the ashes of colonialism. They had the confidence to stand up and assert their intellectual sovereignty.

What happened to that spirit? To the spirit of the Ceylon Economist? Why do we not celebrate those intellectuals? Is it because we do not recognise their achievements? Or is it because today’s intellectuals have turned their backs on the project that that generation started but could not complete? Can Sri Lankans do economics?

(The article is based on a speech delivered at ‘Economic Policy Paradigms for Development: Beyond the Mainstream Horizon’, organised by the University of Colombo Department of Economics, Economics Student Association, and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)

(Shiran Illanperuma is a Sri Lankan journalist and political economist. He is a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and a co-editor of Wenhua Zongheng: A Journal of Contemporary Chinese Thought. He is a visiting lecturer at University of Colombo, Bandaranaike Center for International Studies, and National Defence College Sri Lanka.)

Opinion

Legal community has a vital duty to critique judicial decisions

Published

2 days ago

2026/07/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

Dr. Wickramaratne

Let me first, on behalf of Lake House Printers and Publishers and myself, thank you for accepting the invitation to attend this launch.

I will not say anything about the book but will leave that to others; Saliya and Dinesha have already done so. Thank you, Saliya and Dinesha, for your contribution.

Why do we need conversations about constitutional law and constitutional reform?

Sri Lanka, like most countries in the Commonwealth, is a common law country. Common law countries are distinguished by their reliance on judicial precedent and judge-made law, which evolve through case-by-case reasoning rather than comprehensive codification. This tradition emphasises flexibility, judicial independence, and the adversarial process.

In common law countries, the legal community therefore has a vital duty to critique judicial decisions, as precedent-based systems rely on ongoing scrutiny to ensure fairness, coherence, and legitimacy. Without critique, judge-made law risks stagnation, bias (whether institutional, personal, or doctrinal), or detachment from evolving social values. A critique is a structured, analytical evaluation of a work, idea, or situation that highlights both strengths and weaknesses, aiming to provide constructive insights rather than mere faultfinding. It differs from simple criticism by being more formal, balanced, and evidence-based.

Critique ensures that precedents are tested, refined, or overturned when they no longer serve justice. It often inspires legislative intervention when judicial precedent proves inadequate. Critiquing judgments trains lawyers to think critically and equips them to argue for doctrinal changes. Transparent debate reassures citizens that judicial power is exercised responsibly. Critique allows courts in different common law countries to learn from each other’s reasoning.

“The law is what the last judge said in the last case” is a pithy way of expressing a feature of the common law—that the law develops through judicial precedent and that the most recent authoritative decision ordinarily represents the current law. There is no such thing as settled law; what appears settled remains so only until a later judgment unsettles it. An example would be helpful.

The makers of the Indian Constitution debated whether the exception to the protection of life and liberty should be limited to a procedure established by law or to due process of law. If it was according to procedure established by law, the legislature ought to be trusted not to make bad laws. If it were according to due process of law, the judiciary would have the authority to question a law on the ground that it is not good law and is not in consonance with fundamental principles. The Constituent Assembly consciously decided on ‘procedure established by law’.

Soon after the Indian Constitution was adopted, it was argued in A.K. Gopalan v Madras that the word ‘law’ in Article 21 meant the principles of natural justice. That argument was rejected.

But a quarter of a century later, in Maneka Gandhi’s case, the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Bhagwati laid down that any law which deprives a person of his life or personal liberty is invalid unless it prescribes a fair and just procedure for such deprivation. In short, the Court read ‘due process’ into Article 21 despite the Constituent Assembly’s conscious decision not to use the phrase.

In 1991, at the first SAARCLAW conference in Colombo, Justice Bhagwati, who had retired by then, spoke on Indian developments in public law. I asked him at question time how he did it in the face of that conscious decision by the Constituent Assembly. His response was that a country must keep pace with modern legal developments and that the people are entitled to benefit from them.

A few words about the influence of foreign jurisprudence. Some in the legal community are reluctant to draw on foreign jurisprudence, viewing it as incompatible with domestic legal traditions, or just because it is foreign.

Just two examples of how foreign jurisprudence has helped develop the law in Sri Lanka.

In India, the Supreme Court had given an expansive meaning to equal protection of the law by holding that ‘anything that is arbitrary violates equal protection’. In Elmo Perera v. Jayawickrama, Mr HL De Silva PC strenuously argued for a similar expansion. A full-bench, divided 6 to 3, declined, holding that the petitioner had not shown that there was unequal treatment. Justice Wanasundera, in his dissent, held that in the case of a person in a group, the comparison would be with the norm or protection applicable to the group.

In the landmark case of Jayasinghe v Attorney-General, Justice Mark Fernando went further and held that a violation of the norm would be a violation of equal protection, as judicial notice could and should be taken of the fact that the norm is ordinarily followed. That judgment has since been followed consistently. This was made possible because of developments in India.

As to the actions of state-owned companies and corporations violative of fundamental rights, our Supreme Court initially took a restrictive view, especially in Wijetunga v Insurance Corporation, Chandrasena v National Paper Corporation, and the five-member bench case of Wijeratne v People Bank, all three judgments penned by Chief Justice Sharvananda. He was supervising my doctoral thesis at that time and used to engage in lengthy discussions with me. I expressed my reservations on the correctness of the 3 judgments, and he was ready to listen. One day, he asked me to read Sukhdev v Bhagatram, a judgment by Justice Mathew, whom he held in high esteem. That judgment supported my line of thinking, and I included it in my draft, noting that our Supreme Court has taken a very narrow view. I remember making an ‘oral submission’ as if I was in Court before him. He listened and nodded occasionally. Just that.

Later, I was junior counsel to Mr Batty Weerakoon in a fundamental rights case against some corporation; we appeared for some Sama Samajist trade unionists who had a strong case. Mr NTS Kularatne, who taught me Local Government Law at Law College, appeared for the corporation and confidently cited the three judgments of Chief Justice Sharvananda that I mentioned. Addressing him, the Chief Justice said, ‘Mr Kularatne, do you want to proceed with that argument? I have reconsidered this issue, and I am prepared to write a judgment.’ Mr Kularatne back-tracked, much to my disappointment. We were denied a judgment on the issue which, I am sure, would have been a lucid one.

But very soon, Justice Atukorale, in Rajaratne v Air Lanka, adopted the views of Justice Mathew in Sukhdev v Bhagatram.

A law student from one of the universities interviewed me for an assignment she was working on. She was outspoken and told me that my critiques of judgments seemed measured, temperate, and overtly respectful of the courts. ‘You always say “I submit”, “it is respectfully submitted”.’ I explained to her that a critique of a judgment should not become a polemical exercise, as polemics are adversarial, rhetorical attacks aimed at winning arguments rather than at deepening understanding or improving the law. In the legal community, polemics risk undermining the credibility and constructive purpose of critique.

I took the example of my treatment of Namasivayam v Gunawardena, a judgment by Chief Justice Sharvananda in a case which I myself had argued. The Police officer concerned swore an affidavit to say that he boarded the bus in which the petitioner was travelling, ‘required’ the petitioner to accompany him to the Police Station for questioning, and ‘released’ him after recording his statement. The Chief Justice held that it amounted to an arrest as the Petitioner was deprived of his liberty to go where he pleased. I have described that part of the judgment as a watershed in the field of personal liberty in Sri Lanka, but was critical of another aspect of the judgment.

The petitioner was detained under a detention order under emergency regulations, but fresh orders were not made every month, which, I argued, made continued detention unlawful.

Section 4 of the Public Security Ordinance provides that the expiry or revocation of any Emergency Proclamation shall not affect ‘any offence committed, or any right, liberty or penalty acquired or incurred’. Chief Justice Sharvananda, referring to section 4, stated that the liability to be detained was a penalty incurred by the petitioner under the Emergency Regulations. So, monthly detention orders were unnecessary. I was appalled and said this in my draft chapter:

‘By no stretch of imagination could the liability of a person arrested under Regulation 18 to be detained be termed a ‘penalty’ incurred.’

Chief Justice Sharvananda went through that part, did not say a word, but struck off the words ‘by no stretch of imagination’ with a pencil. The message was clear: ‘Be temperate in the use of language, but you are entitled to critique my judgment’.

The book now reads: ‘It is respectfully submitted that the liability of a person arrested under regulation 18 to be detained cannot be termed a ‘penalty’ incurred.’ I learnt a lot.

Soon after the judgment, the Public Security Ordinance was amended to provide that fresh orders need not be made each time the emergency is extended.

Talking about critique, once when I met Justice Shirani Bandaranayake, she inquired about the progress of the second edition of my book, ‘Fundamental Rights in Sri Lanka’, which she knew I was working on. Among other things, I told her that I was critical of the three determinations on the freedom of religious propagation she had authored. Her response was: ‘Oh! That is alright, as long as you don’t call me names.’ Now, that is the correct spirit.

This book is not only about constitutional jurisprudence but also constitutional reform. I hope the reform process will benefit from my contribution.

I want to thank Lake House Printers and Publishers for a job well done.

Now that this book is finally out, I will rest for a few weeks and start work on the 4th edition of ‘Fundamental Rights in Sri Lanka.’

Text of the speech by Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne

at the launch of his latest book, Constitutional Conversations in Colombo on 16 July 2026)