13 May 2023 12:00 am Views - 114
By Lakmal Sooriyagoda
A Fundamental Rights petition filed by British woman instagrammer Kayleigh Fraser challenging the Sri Lankan authorities’ decision to deport her from Sri Lanka has been dismissed by the Supreme Court with costs fixed at Rs.500,000.
Kayleigh Fraser who had been documenting Sri Lanka’s anti-government protests on social media last year filed this petition seeking an order to quash the decision of the Department of Immigration and Emigration to deport her in an arbitrary manner.
The Supreme Court three-judge bench headed by Justice Murdu Fernando decided to dismiss the petition at the beginning after taking into consideration the preliminary objections raised by the Attorney General.
The Attorney General appearing for the Controller General of Immigration raised preliminary objections on the following grounds; the application does not fall within the ambit of executive or administrative action; this application is vexatious and designed to embarrass the court; there is no proper affidavit before court and the Petitioner has suppressed material facts and misrepresented facts to court.
“The learned counsel for the Petitioner did not respond to the allegation of suppression of material pertaining to SC/FR/299/2022 in his submissions before us. However, he was gracious enough to accept that the Petitioner was in Sri Lanka not on a resident visa as pleaded in the petition but on a medical visa, which is clearly depicted in the visa document X5 filed together with the petition. Hence, we do not wish to examine the objection pertaining to suppression regarding the category of visa any further,” Justice Murdu Fernando added.
The Department of Immigration and Emigration had decided to terminate the visa issued to Fraser for violating visa conditions and had informed her to leave the country by 15th of August, 2022.
On a previous occasion, the Court of Appeal had also dismissed the petitioner’s writ petition on the same legal grounds.
Attorney-at-law Nagananda Kodituwakku appeared for the petitioner. Deputy Solicitor General Kanishka de Silva Balapatabendi appeared for the Attorney General.