The Supreme Court has declared the presidential pardon extended to former MP Duminda Silva by ex-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa as illegal.
Silva, along with four others, had been convicted in 2016 for the 2011 murder of politician Bharatha Lakshman Premachandra, receiving the death penalty. Despite a five-judge bench upholding the verdict, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, after his 2019 election win, granted a surprise pardon exclusively to Silva.
Following this, three separate fundamental rights petitions challenging the legality of the pardon were filed, leading the bench, including Justices P. Padman Surasena, Gamini Amarasekera, and Arjuna Obeysekera, to unanimously determine the flawed and unlawful nature of the pardon process.