MONETABRIEF - Sri Lanka’s seniormost naval officer, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, was arrested on Friday for bending rules to recruit the then president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son and send him to Britain for higher training.

Karannagoda, 73, was taken into custody by the Bribery Commission over the 2006 enlistment of Yoshitha Rajapaksa without the required qualifications.

Yoshitha Rajapaksa is currently on bail following his arrest last month in the same case, in which he is accused of using public funds for training at Dartmouth, Britain’s prestigious naval college.

Karannagoda, a former navy commander credited with playing a key role in the military defeat of Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009, was appointed the country’s highest-ranking naval officer in 2019 by Maithripala Sirisena when he promoted Sarath Fonseka as a Field Marshal.

Karannagoda later served as Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Japan from 2011 to 2015. He returned to public office in December 2021 when then president Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed him governor of North Western Province, a post he held until May 2023 when he was removed by President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Karannagoda has faced longstanding allegations of human rights abuses during the final phase of the war and was sanctioned by Britain in March last year over alleged serious violations, including extrajudicial killings.

He is also implicated in the abduction and killing of 11 young men, most of them students, between 2008 and 2009 in a case that has become one of Sri Lanka’s most prominent wartime disappearance probes.

Prosecutors allege that the victims were kidnapped for ransom by a group linked to naval intelligence and later killed.

Karannagoda was named as a suspect for allegedly failing to prevent the crimes and for shielding those responsible. He has denied the allegations.

Charges against him, including conspiracy to murder, were dropped in October 2021 when Gotabaya Rajapaksa was president, but have since been revived under the administration of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who came to power in September 2024 pledging to pursue accountability for unresolved crimes.

Cases against the Rajapaksa family have gained renewed impetus since Dissanayake’s election, with several members and close associates facing charges ranging from corruption to murder, many of which remain pending before the courts.

Yoshitha Rajapaksa also faces a separate prosecution over unexplained wealth linked to a house purchase during his father’s presidency from 2005 to 2015, as well as another case relating to the acquisition of a television network.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa was handed a foreign travel ban earlier last month in connection with the ongoing investigation into the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings that killed 279 people and wounded over 500.eom