Rankoth Pedige Nishantha Premarathna v. The Attorney General – CA HCC/0290/17-2022

In the case between the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and Rankoth Pedige Nishantha Premarathna, the court addressed the issue of whether the conviction and imposition of the death sentence for murder, pursuant to section 296 read with section 32 of the Penal Code, was justified given the reliance on circumstantial and medical evidence rather than direct eyewitness testimony. It was determined that the conviction was proper, as the circumstantial and expert evidence established that the death was a homicide staged as a suicide, and that the evidence excluded reasonable doubt as to the accused’s guilt. The principle reaffirmed is that, in the absence of direct evidence, circumstantial evidence must be so cogent that it is inconsistent with any hypothesis other than the accused’s