Usaviya Nihandai A documentary based on fiction?

By C. A. Chandraprema-October 20, 2016

Prasanna Vitanage’s new film ‘Usaviya Nihandai’ has run into controversy with the Colombo District Court issuing an interim injunction order banning the screening of this film on an application made by a former Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake. We have had movies based on the life stories or the deeds and misdeeds of various criminals like Maru Sira, Yakadaya and Saradiel but this was the first time a film had been based on the alleged misdeeds of a Magistrate. The word ‘alleged’ has to be used here because the controversy that this film has run into is based on the contention that the misdeeds that this Magistrate is supposed to have committed have never been proved. This film is not presented to the public as a work of creative fiction but as a documentary based on real events.

The trailer of the film features Victor Ivan and lawyer Kalyananda Tiranagama giving their opinions on how serious the Magistrate’s alleged misdeeds were. Little wonder that the former Magistrate concerned, Lenin Ratnayake who is now a practicing lawyer had gone to courts seeking a permanent injunction banning it. This controversy once again brings into focus issues relating to the media and the judiciary which had been under discussion in the past few weeks in connection with scurrilous and defamatory statements against judges made in the alternative media especially websites.

The film is based on a headline story published in the Ravaya in 1999 stating that the then Baddegama Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake had been found guilty of all charges brought against him before a three-member committee comprising of Appeal Court judges appointed by the Judicial Services Commission to go into allegations made by the Ravaya against the Magistrate. The charges related to the following.

1. Summoning a female suspect by the name of Jayantha Gunawardena Menike to his chambers through a lawyer on 17 December 1999 and having sexual intercourse with her.

2. After the victim had fallen ill following this incident, sending a vehicle and getting her down to an unspecified place, threatening her with a pistol and once again having sexual relations with her.

3. Taking one W. B. M. Kamalawathie, (the wife of a suspect named Chandana Pushparuwan being tried before him) to the Gampola Rest House on the pretext of recording a secret statement from her and having sexual relations with her.

4. Concealing from the Judicial Services Commission the fact that when he was an employee of the Ceylon Insurance Corporation he had been found guilty of fraud and dismissed from his job.

Last Sunday, Victor Ivan had once again stated that the allegations made by him against Lenin Ratnayake were correct and that the latter had been found guilty of all charges by the committee appointed by the Judicial Services Commission. He had said that he himself, and W. B. M. Kamalawathie, Chandana Pushparuwan, Jayantha Gunawardena Menike, B. Abesinghe (Kamalawathie’s husband) lawyer M.S.M Faiz and Police Inspector Wimalaratne de Silva and W. Mihindukula, Nimal Wijesuriya, lawyer Tissa R. Balalla, on behalf of the Insurance Corporation, had given evidence.

In last week’s reaffirmation Ivan wrote that according to lawyer Faiz Mohamed’s evidence, when he went to the Magistrate’s chambers, Ratnayake had been alone with Jayantha Gunawardena Menike and one sash of the door had been closed and the other covered by a curtain and another lawyer had been standing outside. Ivan stated that it was the lawyer standing outside who had ‘pimped’ for Ratnayake. President’s Counsel Hemantha Warnakulasuriya has a different take on this. He says that at the original stages, he too had been misled into thinking that Lenin Ratnayake had been found guilty of all the allegations made in the Ravaya and that he too had written about it in his own column ‘Mudliar’ in the Sunday Times.

Warnakulasuriya says that he was lucky that Lenin Ratnayake did not sue him or the Sunday Times for defamation at that time because there is no evidence to prove that Ratnayake had been held guilty by the three member committee of Appeal Court judges of the allegations mentioned in the Ravaya. It should be noted that Prasanna Vitanage’s documentary is not based on the dismissal of a Magistrate but on the specific allegation that he had engaged in non-consensual or coerced sexual relations with a female suspect and also with the wife of another suspect. At least according to the trailer, it is the sexual aspect that seems to be emphasised. Lenin Ratnayake was in fact removed from the judiciary by the JSC following the inquiry that was initiated against him.

What is under serious contention is whether he was found guilty of the allegations made by the Ravaya especially the charges of sexual misconduct. Warnakulasuriya says that if three judges of the Court of Appeal who did the preliminary inquiry into the allegations against Lenin Ratnayake had found that the latter had been blackmailing suspects and the wives of suspects in cases being heard before him into having sexual relations, they would have on their own instructed the police to carry out an investigation. Warnakulasuriya says that he too had been professionally negligent back then to have declared Lenin Ratnayake guilty of sexual misconduct in his own writings to the Sunday Times.

In fact back in 1999, when Ravaya carried that headline story that Lenin Ratnayake had been found guilty of all allegations made in the Ravaya by a three-member committee of Appeal Court judges appointed by the Judicial Services Commission, the Acting Secretary of the JSC put out a statement saying that consequent to a preliminary inquiry conducted by a committee comprising of three Appeal Court judges, Magistrate Lenin Ratnayake had been sent on compulsory leave and that this preliminary inquiry was held to determine whether there were grounds for the JSC to commence disciplinary proceedings against Lenin Ratnayake pursuant to the allegations made in the Ravaya. The JSC explained that the preliminary inquiry was now over and that a charge sheet was being considered and that if anybody was suggesting that Mr Ratnayake should be dismissed before a disciplinary inquiry proper was held, that was unacceptable. The statement said that the JSC would not act in an arbitrary and unreasonable manner in violation the fundamental rights guaranteed to every individual in the Constitution.

Warnakulasuriya says that the records of the case filed by Lenin Ratnayake against Swarnavahini for broadcasting comments made by Victor Ivan indicate that Ivan did not have evidence to prove that Ratnayake had been found guilty of the sexual misconduct allegations by the three=member committee of Appeal Court judges. Quoting the Swarnavahini case proceedings, Warnakulasuriya says that when Ivan was asked to produce evidence that Ratnayake had been found guilty of improper sexual conduct with two women, Ivan had said that he did not have any documents to prove that the committee of three Appeal Court judges had found Ratnayake guilty of the charges but that he had written to the then Chief Justice to obtain a copy of the committee report and that he had a letter written to him by an Acting Chief Justice.

When the lawyer for Ratnayake in cross examining Ivan suggested that the Judicial Services Commission had presented a charge sheet against Ratnayake which did not contain any of the allegations made in the Ravaya, Ivan replied that he did not know about that. The Ravaya headline story which inspired Usaviya Nihandai was based on what was supposed to be the findings of the three-member committee of Appeal Court Judges which as the JSC explained, was only a preliminary investigation to find out whether there were sufficient grounds to institute a disciplinary inquiry against Lenin Ratnayake. The contents of the report submitted by the committee of three Appeal Court Judges of the preliminary inquiry and the final charge sheet presented to Lenin Ratnayake by the Judicial Services Commission are unknown. If Ratnayake had been found guilty of the charges of sexual misconduct by a committee appointed by the Judicial Services Commission it seems highly improbable that the matter would not have been reported to the police for further action.

So the question that now hangs over Prasanna Vitanage’s purported documentary film on judicial misconduct is whether it is based on fiction?