Prins Gunasekara and Othera Vs The Attorney General – CA HCC 0188-189/2017-2022

In The Attorney General, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka v. Prins Gunasekara and Kadireshan Jeyakanth, the court addressed the issue of whether the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt the identity and involvement of the accused in the alleged murder and attempted murder, and whether the convictions were lawfully based on identification and evidence establishing common intention under Section 32 of the Penal Code. It was held that the convictions could not be sustained due to significant deficiencies in the prosecution’s evidentiary case, particularly regarding identification and the lack of proof of common intention. The principle reaffirmed is that criminal conviction must rest on clear, credible, and legally admissible evidence; suspicion or defective identification