Professor Gamini Ranasinghe has been appointed as the Acting Director General of Archaeology.

The post fell vacant due to the retirement of former Director General Dr. Pradeepa Serasinghe.

Buddha Sasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs Ministry Secretary Somaratne Widanapathirana said that Professor Ranasinghe has been appointed to the new position in addition to his current position as the Director General of the Central Cultural Fund.

The Bambalapitiya Police have received a complaint stating that the death of millionaire businessman Lalith Kotelawala was suspicious.

The complaint was made by the elder sister of Mr. Kotalawala’s wife, 84-year-old Sherin Fernando.

She said that she did not know the health condition of the deceased, what medicines he used for which diseases and the nature of doctors who treated him.

Accordingly, it has been decided to conduct a post-mortem examination today (23) at the Colombo Judicial Medical Officer’s office to ascertain the cause of his death.

She told the police that Mr. Kotelawala lived separately with some of his employees in a house in Bambalapitiya while his wife Cecilia lived in another house in the same area.

A retired principal who allegedly obtained an amount of Rs.42,055,000 from the People’s Bank fraudulently, has been arrested by the Public Complaints Investigation Department of the CID.

The suspect is said to have obtained loans from two bank branches located in Kandy and Gampola under the ‘Gurusetha’ loan scheme introduced by the People’s Bank.

The arrested suspect is a 69-year-old retired principal from Hindagala.

According to the CID, the principal has prepared fake documents and fraudulently obtained this amount from the two branches on 26 occasions.

However, with the disclosure of this fraud, it was reported that doubts have arisen in the banking sector whether there are shortcomings in identifying recurring errors in the People’s Bank’s internal data system.

Source – Lankadeepa