After book on Chandrika, Lanka journalist seeks asylum

Ratnasiri Wickramanayakan, leader of the House and Prime Minister now, had written to him that the Government planned to impeach the judges on Keerthi’s charges, the journalist said.

According to him, contract killers started following him, looking for an opportunity to finish him off. “After staying in a hotel room at Colombo, the safest area in Sri Lanka, I fled to Singapore and landed in Chennai.”

Keerthi Kalamegam was with Lake House, which publishes the Sunday Observer. He lost his job after he wrote an article on the Lake House’s involvement in Lalit Athulatmudali’s killing.

According to him, Kumaratunga, who was chief minister of the Western Province of Sri Lanka at that time, wrote to Bar Council president D.W. Abeykon that Keerthi was well known to her. She wrote that he lost his job under “unjust circumstances” and suggested it was a good case for a Fundamental Rights application.

Kalamegam said he feels safe in Chennai but will have to depend on the sale of his book for a living, whose Tamil version would be released in two months.