Colombo, Sep 25 (PTI) A court in Sri Lanka's southwestern town of Ratnapura on Monday sentenced a former senior police officer to five years in jail for protecting a politician from arrest over a murder charge.

Lalith Jayasinghe, the former Senior Deputy Inspector General of the Sabaragamuwa Province, was found guilty of influencing an officer in-charge of a local police station not to arrest Premalal Jayasekera, a current minister of state.

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Ratnapura High Court on Monday sentenced him to five years in jail.

Jayasekera and three others had been charged for the murder of an opposition party activist during the campaigning for the presidential elections of January 2015.

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In July 2020, the Ratnapura High Court found Jayasekera guilty and sentenced him to death. Jayasekera filed an appeal against the sentence and he was freed from all charges and the death sentence by the Appeals Court in March 2022.

He was re-elected to parliament in 2020 and currently serves as a minister of state.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)