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Wife of former Sri Lankan minister arrested over fake passport

Xinhua, February 23, 2015 Adjust font size:

Sri Lankan police have arrested the wife of a former minister for allegedly holding a fake diplomatic passport, a police spokesman said on Monday.

Wife of former housing minister Wimal Weerawansa, Shashi Weerawansa, was arrested at a private hospital in Malabe on Sunday where she was undergoing treatment for an illness and is expected to be produced in courts soon, Police Spokesman SSP Ajith Rohana said.

According to Rohana, Weerawansa's wife is also being held for providing fraudulent documents to the immigration and emigration authorities in order to obtain another passport, in addition to the fake diplomatic passport she possessed.

Rohana said that the police have gathered sufficient evidence to institute legal action against her. He added that the investigation carried out by the Criminal Investigations Department had unearthed sufficient evidence to charge her for possessing fake documents and for her utterances at the Immigration and Emigration Department to obtain a passport, on the basis of fraudulent documents.

"Shashi Weerawansa is now under arrest, and will be interrogated and produced before courts. We have sufficient evidence now to produce the suspect before courts," Rohana said.

Shashi is also accused of providing conflicting dates of birth when obtaining the passports, first the ordinary travel document and later the diplomatic passport.

Also in the birth documents of her three children, Shashi is accused of providing three different birthdays of herself.

Former minister Weerawansa has also been accused by police for altering his birthdays on his children's birth certificates, and is expected to be questioned by the island nation's Criminal Investigations Department soon.

Weerawansa, who was a close ally of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, has been critical of the new government and is strongly working towards bringing the former president back to politics in time to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections expected to be held in June. Endi