By Saman Indrajith

Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Parliamentarian M. A. Sumanthiran expressed serious concerns, on Thursday (10), about an amendment to the Poisons, Opium and Dangerous Drugs Ordinance.

He told Parliament: “There is a concern that the bail application has to now be made through the Court of Appeal instead of High Court. Now this is a very serious issue, this is not a question of making bail stringent. This is a question of access to Justice. I am saying that because the Court of Appeal sits only in Colombo, whereas now with the provincial High Courts you can go to your provincial capital. In lots of instances, the High Court sits in more than one city or town in a province, and you can make an application. Now this is very important, this is not a question of being lenient towards a possession of dangerous drugs, this is about anybody who is accused of this offence being able to go to court,” he said.

The TNA MP said that the access to justice must not be denied and that there are incidents where people are framed or various dissections take place. Therefore, suspects must be able to approach court and that must never be made difficult, he said.

“It is only after the 13th Amendment to the constitution, that the first appeal even from a District Court matter can be made to the Court in the province. Before that even if the District Judge made a small mistake in the course of proceedings, you have to come to Colombo and make an application. So devolution – we talk about executive powers and legislative powers but with regard to the Judiciary a salutary feature came in, when people can access to a justice at least in the first appeal. So I appeal to the Minister not to remove the jurisdictions to grant bail in this way to one central place in the whole country. Because that is denial of Justice to people and also it is against devolution,” Sumanthiran said.

The MP said there were concerns with proposed Prison ordinance rules as well. The amendment proposes to strip several rights prisoners have enjoyed over 100 years, he said. Sumanthiran said the new Bill is creating categories of prisoners, based on their financial status.

“There are categories, categories of prisoners, and what are the categories? Categories are those who can pay; you are creating paying wards, I heard MP Dilan Perera say this also, we can’t escape wondering whether some in the Government ranks are preparing places for them in the prison. They know that they are going to stay a lot of time in the prison, so they are creating luxurious apartments in prisons already so that when they go there they can live in comfort. It looks like that,” he said.

Sumanthiran said this goes against the fundamental principle that all citizens and particularly citizens who are under the control of the state, must be treated equally.

“The conditions in the prisons are bad, so the answer is not to alleviate those hardships for the few who can part with some money. That is wrong s- that is fundamentally wrong, and no country should ever do that, and therefore I bring it to the Minister’s notice that those ordinances that create differences in class of prisoners must be abolished,” he said.