Lanka's detained police officer urges SC to grant him half of his salary

Sri Lanka's former counter terrorism unit chief Nalaka de Silva, accused of hatching a plot to assassinate the country's top leadership, has approached the Supreme Court urging it to issue an order to grant him at least half of his monthly salary until the conclusion of the probe.

A three-member Supreme Court bench on Monday ordered the secretary of the independent police commission to appear before the court on February 17 in response to the plea filed by Silva.

Silva was accused of hatching a plot to assassinate the then president Maithripala Sirisena and the current president Gotabaya Rajapaksa in October 2018.

Silva, the former director of Terrorist Investigation Division, had filed the petition claiming that his arrest was illegal.

The court was told that Silva had faced severe economic hardships due to his salary being suspended.

The CID arrested Silva in October last year following the claims made by Namal Kumara of Anti-Corruption Force, a local activist group.

Kumara claimed that Silva discussed with him an alleged plot to kill President Sirisena and Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa was elected president in the election held last month.

In a shake up of the intelligence apparatus, Rajapaksa's office appointed Brigadier Suresh Sallay as the chief of the State Intelligence Service (SIS), making him the first military officer to hold the post.

The SIS' role in the Easter bombings by a jihadi group which killed 259 people was recently probed by a parliamentary select committee.

The committee said that intelligence information related to the attacks was first received by the Director, SIS on April 4 but there were delays from his end to share it with the relevant intelligence and security personnel.