• Court to decide on family request for mobile phones in CID custody after GA report on same is received 

The Colombo Magistrate’s Court (MC) yesterday (14) ordered the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) to submit a report on 23 July of this year, pertaining to the progress of the investigations into the death of businessman Dinesh Schaffter.

This case was taken up before Colombo Additional Magistrate Harshana Kekunawela yesterday.

However, the CID informed the Court that further investigations are underway regarding the relevant incident.

Meanwhile, the attorneys representing the aggrieved party (the Schaffter family) stated before Court that the mobile phones that have been taken into custody by the Police contain confidential information such as pictures of the wife and children of the deceased, and therefore requested that an order be issued to allow the victim’s family to retrieve the mobile phones. After inquiring information from the CID in this regard, the Additional Magistrate informed that he would consider the request of the aggrieved party, after receiving the Government Analyst’s (GA) report related to the mobile phones in question.

Later, the case was postponed to 23 July.

The former Director of the Janashakthi PLC Group, Schaffter, was found tied up in his car at the General Cemetery in Borella on 15 December 2022, and died a day later while receiving treatment at the Intensive Care Unit of the National Hospital in Colombo. On 1 November 2023, the Colombo MC determined that the death of Schaffter occurred as a result of external pressure applied on his neck and facial area, after the five-member experts’ committee comprised of judicial medical officers appointed to uncover the actual cause of death of late Schaffter submitted its report on the post-mortems to the Court. 

Accordingly, the Magistrate who ruled that a crime had been committed through this incident, ordered the Director of the CID to arrest the relevant suspects and produce them before Court. There, the Additional Magistrate Rajindra Jayasuriya ordered the CID to take measures to hand over the remains of the late businessman, which were placed at a State Hospital, to his family members. She also ordered to provide necessary facilities for the burial of the remains at the Jawatte Cemetery, as per previous Court orders.