A Sri Lankan parliamentarian has called for the arrest of the former state minister and Tamil UNP MP Vijayakala Maheswaran, following a speech she made in Jaffna earlier this year.

Udaya Gammanpila, a parliamentarian representing the Colombo district, said that he was going to “issue a writ against the Attorney General to immediately arrest” Ms Maheswaran.

Shares in Sri Lanka fell for a fourth straight session, as foreign investors continue to sell blue chip stocks, reports Reuters.

The Colombo stock index dropped 0.47 percent this week, with year to date losses of 3.4 percent.

The fall comes as foreign investors continue to sell equities net worth 169.6 million rupees on Thursday, bringing the year-to-date net foreign outflows to 2.5 billion rupees.

Sri Lanka's law and order minister said yesterday he would be sending a list of wanted criminals to India as many of them were hiding in India. 

Speaking to the Daily Mirror Mr Ranjith Bandara said, “I had talks with the Indian High Commissioner here. We will prepare the details to be submitted to them."

He had previously said he was in discussions with the United Arab Emirates regarding criminals that he believed were hiding there too. 

A Tamil asylum seeker, whose father was shot dead and his mother and sister were disappeared this year has been deported to Sri Lanka from Australia, The Guardian reports. 

The man, known only as 'Kavi', had been detained in an immigration camp for the past four months after his bridging visa expired. 

He fled to Australia 6 years ago after the end of the armed conflict in 2009.

In a statement to Australia's home affairs minister, Kavi wrote:  

“On 5 January 2018 I received a very distressing call from my mother.

A Hindu priest who has been in custody for nearly 13 years under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has finally been released, after a Colombo court accepted he was forced into signing a confession over an assassination attempt on Sri Lanka’s former defence secretary.

The priest. identified as Sriskandarajah Sharma, had been arrested in 2006 under the much criticised PTA, after an assassination attempt on Sri Lanka’s then defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.

There was no evidence against the priest apart from a confession, that Colombo High Court Judge Sampath Abeykoon accepted he had been forced into signing.

Despite ongoing reports in Sri Lankan papers that the Airports Authority of India (AAI) was planning to purchase a stake in the loss-making Mattala airport, India has denied that such a proposal was on the cards. 

Asked in the Lok Sabha whether AAI was planning to buy a significant stake in the airport, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha was quoted by the Economic Times as replying, "No such proposal is under consideration at present."

Mr Sinha also denied there were plans to build a flying school and complete maintenance work at the airport. 

A panel discussion was held at the British parliament this week, to mark the 35^th anniversary of the Black July pogrom, when thousands of Tamils were killed.

Sri Lankan soldiers again involved themselves in the annual chariot festival of a Hindu temple in Achuveli.

Soldiers and army officers were present in uniform at the festival and engaged in activities such as pulling the chariot, usually an important ritual expected of devotees.

The highly criticised Civil Security Department of Sri Lanka has made 100 temporary Tamil workers in Kilinochchi into permanent employees, despite repeated calls for the department to dismantle its businesses and hand over ventures such as farms and preschools to cooperatives or the provincial council. 

The appointments were made as part of a plan to gradually make permanent 1507 temporary employees that have worked for the department for 5 years and over.

The victims of Black July, the anti-Tamil pogroms of 1983, were remembered in Batticaloa.

The commemoration was held by the Tamil National People’s Front at the party’s Batticaloa office on Monday night.