Former President, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and her sister Sunethra Bandaranaike, this week, officially inherited properties of their brother, the late Anura Bandaranaike, after a long-drawn legal battle.
The former President was present at the Colombo District Court on Wednesday to accept ownership of the properties previously owned by her brother.
Sunethra Bandaranaike, in 2009, filed a lawsuit claiming ownership for former Minister Anura Bandaranaike’s properties, claiming that her brother died without a Last Will.
Four other people, including a body guard of Anura Bandaranaike intervened in the lawsuit, claiming ownership for a sizable proportion of Bandaranaike’s properties. They presented the copy of a document saying it was Bandaranaike’s Last Will, but the court refused to accept it as a legally valid document.
Sunethra Bandaranaike’s lawyers said that the former Minister destroyed a document, which was considered his Last Will, while he was alive. Therefore, the copy of the Last Will, presented by the former Minister’s security guard, did not receive legal validity.
As a result, it was decided that Sunethra and Chandrika, Anura Bandaraike’s two sisters, were the inheritors of his properties which included over Rs. 1.1 billion worth cash.
When the former President visited the Colombo District Court premises, on Wednesday, she seemed shocked at the dilapidated state of some buildings.
“How do you manage to work here?” the former President asked some officials present at the venue.
Some accompanied the former President, who said, that the court officials and workers should be paid a special allowance for working in such deplorable conditions, without complaining!