Prisoners drag ex-min to SL top court

Eight Tamil prisoners in Sri Lanka have approached the country’s Supreme Court claiming that their fundamental rights were violated by former prisons minister Lohan Ratwatte who allegedly threatened them on gunpoint, their lawyers said on Thursday.

Ratwatte, the Minister of State for Prisons Management, resigned on September 15 after an uproar over his alleged remarks to kill Tamil prisoners during his recent visit to a jail in the island nation’s north central region. In the petition, the prisoners claimed that Ratwatte visited the Anuradhapura prison on September 12 and threatened them at gunpoint.