Ratnapura Vijitha Nanda Thera v. The Attorney General – sllr 1999 volume 1 page 267

In the case of Ratnapura Vijitha Nanda Thera v. The Attorney-General, the court addressed the issue of whether funds received by a Buddhist priest and trainee teacher constituted illegal gratification under Section 19(c) of the amended Bribery Act or represented legitimate expenditure for religious practices. The central legal questions also involved the admissibility of similar fact evidence in light of the “res inter alios actae non nocet” principle and the relevance requirements set by sections 14 and 15 of the Evidence Ordinance. It was determined that the trial court had wrongly relied on evidence from a separate, unrelated transaction to infer the accused’s character, thereby contravening established legal standards. The appellate court, referencing key authorities such as Thompson v