Kurunegala High Court Judge Lal Bandara Ranasinghe sentenced four people, including Kurunegala’s former mayor Thushara Sanjeeva Vitarana, to three years of hard labor for demolishing the archeologically valuable Raj Sabha Mandapa building belonging to the era of king Bhuvanekabahu .
Former municipal commissioner Pradeep Thilakaratne, former municipal engineer Chaminda Bandara Adhikari, work supervisor Elaluddin Zulfikar and backhoe machine operator SP Laxman Priyantha were the other accused here.
The defendants were indicted on five counts and they pleaded guilty to three counts each and sentenced to three years’ hard labor on one count and a fine of one lakh rupees was also imposed on the first accused. The rest of the defendants were fined fifty thousand rupees each
They were paid a compensation of 13.6 million rupees for the destroyed building and were sentenced to another 6 years in prison in case of default. The accused deposited the compensation within two hours.
The government lawyer submitted to the court that the building destroyed by the defendants is a building of archaeological importance and the offense committed by them was serious.
The High Court judge said that the entire country’s attention was drawn to the incident, and the accused could receive the maximum punishment. He pointed out that the former mayor has acted very irresponsibly as the first citizen of the city.
The former mayor, who is a relative of Hirapu Minister Johnston Pranadu, said that a person named Buwaneka ran a hotel in this building, and that it is not an archaeological monument related to the era of King Buwanekaba.