The writ application is based on startling revelations in a CID B report filed at the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court on 26 September (Thursday) which contained nearly a hundred pages of annexed documents supporting the agency’s findings. The CID told the Chief Magistrate that Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s dual citizenship file was not available at any one of the ministries or departments it should have been in. Statements from the Department of Immigration and Ministry of Defence said the files were not in their position. The CID has been unable to trace an application for dual citizenship filed by Gotabaya Rajapaksa in 2005.
However Colombo Telegraph learns that all dual citizenship files are in the custody of the Department of Immigration and Emigration, even though Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s entire file is missing.
Making matters worse Rajapaksa’s dual citizenship certificate number 15305 is assigned to another individual, the CID investigation found.
The SLPP scrambling to defend Rajapaksa after the petition was fixed for support on Wednesday and Thursday at the Court of Appeal released the former Defence Secretary’s purported Dual Citizenship certificate on Twitter yesterday. The disclosure led to even more questions.
In October 2016 Gotabaya Rajapaksa submitted his dual citizenship certificate to the Registration of Persons Department when he was applying for a new National ID. The certificate submitted by Rajapaksa himself as part of his NIC application bears the certificate number 15305A. However the certificate published on Twitter by SLPP politico Kanchana Wijesekera bore the number 15305. It is unclear which certificate has been doctored to include or delete the “A”.