SC Judge Buran shows SL courts are like ‘parana coat’ under moth eaten MaRa regime

(Lanka-e-News-28.Feb.2013, 5.30PM) The evil habit of exerting pressures by the Executive on the media instructing on what should and should not be written has now spread even to the Supreme court (MaRa court ). This was clearly illustrated in the Supreme Court (SC), according to reports. On 26th February, to hear the cases in court 403 in the SC , the judges who mounted the bench were three justices with Shiranee Buran as the head of the panel. One case that was to be heard by this panel was a fundamental rights (FR) petition filed against the present c(t)hief justice Mohan Peiris where a sum of Rs. 600 million due from Royal Fernwood Co. to the Government could not be recovered allegedly because of Peiris when he was the attorney General (AG). Previously, this case was dismissed after Peiris became the new c(t)hief justice . That day , the motion pertaining to the FR petition filed by Lawyer Nagalanda Kodituwakku against this dismissal was heard. Justice Shiranee Buran the President of the panel after examining the petition rejected it again on the ground that it is without a foundation in law. Truly speaking her rejection of the motion is illegal. Not that the motion is unfounded , rather it is simply that she is rejecting a case what she personally dislikes . It is evident there-from that it is not justice she is dispensing but its travesty based on personal prejudices Be that as it may , after rejecting the motion , the judge Buran made a gesture with her hand beckoning Stanley Samarasinghe , a senior reporter among the media who was present in court to come to her chamber. Perhaps , Samarasinghe must have thought it is not him she is summoning , because this is not a country where a judge from the bench makes beckoning gestures to the media. Buran did not stop at that , she sent her court proceedings ‘recorder’ just in front of her to Samarasinghe and asked him to come to her Chamber . She recessed the court for 15 minutes and waited in the chamber for Samarasinghe. After Stanley appeared in her chamber , she had inquired from him , ‘how are you going to report this case . See that it is reported in the usual way,’ she had warned .Stanley has asked , ‘why madam? ’ Buran has then started giving instructions to Stanley , a senior court reporter with 25 years experience in the media , on how the court decision should be reported and worded in a manner to conceal the duplicitous verdict. In addition she had told to instruct the other media personnel too to follow this. There is no further evidence needed than this episode where a judge from the bench summons an outsider by making gestures like a pavement hawker trying to sell his/her spurious and fake wares via gesticulations, to testify to the fact that in SL what exists now are not courts but ‘parana coats’ under a moth eaten MaRa regime. It is high time not only the entire judicial sphere but even the media organizations protest against this sordid and uncouth conduct of a SC judge specially, while being on the sacrosanct bench. Otherwise , very soon , judges like Shiranee Buran may summon the media personnel to his/ her chamber and cheekily instruct what jockstraps they must wear when sitting in her court.