Sumathipala missing, denies evading arrest
Sri Lanka's cricket board chief Thilanga Sumathipala yesterday denied that he was evading arrest on charges under the country's Immigration and Emigration laws.
On Friday CID detectives were ordered by the Attorney General to arrest the multi-millionaire businessman who is also chairman of Sri Lanka Telecom on grounds that he abetted a gangster, now in remand prison, leave the country for the cricket World Cup in 1999 in England on a forged passport.

If convicted, Mr. Sumathipala could face a maximum jail term of seven years with a mandatory three-year sentence. In a statement issued last afternoon under Mr. Sumathipala's name, the media unit of Sri Lanka Cricket, the game's governing body, claimed that moves to arrest him on the eve of the start of the England-Sri Lanka test series gave rise to the "real motives" and "regardless of the damage to the country".

Mr. Sumathipala was last seen in public on Friday morning at the southern Galle esplanade where the first of the three-test series begins on Tuesday. Following a tip-off of his arrest, Mr. Sumathipala went missing, but the official statement issued on his behalf denied that he had gone into hiding. "I have not (gone into hiding), but will go before the court next week seeking justice," the statement said.

Denying allegations in sections of the media that he was linked to any underworld gangsters, Mr. Sumathipala has demanded his constitutional rights be protected.
Details of complicity in taking a suspect contract-killer to England on a forged passport poured after another contract-killer now in jail made a confession first to the police and then to a magistrate.

The confession included an allegation that Mr. Sumathipala hired gunmen to fire several rounds of bullets into the residence of a newspaper editor critical of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Attorney General’s Department sources said yesterday there was insufficient evidence to indict Mr. Sumathipala on charges of conspiracy to murder or cause hurt, but that after what they complained was a "lethargic" investigation originally by the CID, a fresh squad of detectives had unearthed sufficient evidence to charge him under the Immigration and Emigration Act. This law has been given fresh teeth following the recent spate of human trafficking cases from Sri Lanka.

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