SC confirms death sentence on Krishanthy murder accused
[TamilNet, Tuesday, 03 February 2004, 18:22 GMT]
The Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Tuesday confirmed the death sentence on the five Sri Lanka Army (SLA) soldiers who were convicted for the rape and murder of four Tamils including a high school student, Krishanthy Kumarasamy, in 1996 in Jaffna district, legal sources said.
The five-member bench of the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal by the five accused against the High Court verdict stating, "the accused had failed to furnish sufficient evidence to quash the death sentence against them," legal sources said. The five accused soldiers of the SLA, Somaratne Rajapakse, A.M. Jayasinghe, M.Priyadharsana, Priyanka Perera and D.M.Jayatilake Perera, earlier filed an appeal against the verdict of the High Court Trail-at-Bar Judges citing reasons that all the three judges who heard the case had delivered their judgments separately and not jointly. The Supreme Court said the charges against the accused had been proven beyond doubt in the High Court Trial-at-Bar before the panel of three judges, legal sources said. The accused committed the crime on 7th September at Chemmani checkpoint near Kaithady Jaffna. The incident took place when Krishanthy was returning home after attending school. Later three others including the mother of Krishanthy were also killed by the accused when they went to the army sentry where all the accused were on duty on that day of incident, in search of Krishanthy, legal sources said.
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