A MAN was yesterday jailed for nine years for the manslaughter of his girlfriend.
Sajeeva Lanka Sirisena de Silva Pilipannage, 28 from Sri Lanka, had been charged with beating his 32-year-old girlfriend Mirosha Shiromi, also from Sri Lanka, on February 6, 2005. The attack left the woman in a comatose condition until she succumbed to her injuries five days later.
Pilipannage’s defence lawyer Mikis Ioannou had pleaded mitigation, arguing his client had never intended to kill his girlfriend
The panel of three judges had heard that on the night of the attack, Pilipannage had been drunk and did not intend to kill Shiromi. The lawyer also argued his client had driven his girlfriend to Nicosia General Hospital after she fell unconscious.
“My client’s biggest punishment is the nightmare of that fateful night, in which he has taken away the life of his soul-mate and future wife, which still continues to haunt him,” Ioannou said.
The accused had initially claimed he had found his girlfriend unconscious on the road, but later changed his story after being questioned at Nicosia CID. He was initially charged with assault, before having the charge upgraded to manslaughter when his girlfriend died in hospital on February 11, 2005.
Pilipannage, who showed no emotion as the details of the attack were read out by the court, arrived on the island in 2002. He enlisted in a college in Nicosia before meeting Shiromi a year later. A whirlwind romance followed, but their relationship was marred by Pilipannage’s violent temper, which often resulted in Shiromi being assaulted, the court heard.
The 28-year-old’s violent conduct finally had its toll on the woman after they left a friend’s party in Ayioi Omoloyites on February 6 last year. Pilipannage, who was drunk and annoyed that his girlfriend did not serve him a drink at the party, beat her in his car on the way home.
State pathologists who examined her body days later deduced that she had sustained massive head injuries and internal bleeding as a result of a series of blows.
A report on Pilipannage by the Welfare Services revealed that he was from a modest family in Sri Lanka, that his father was retired through illness and that he had two brothers. Prior to his arrest, he had recently won a scholarship to attend a college in Canada, in which he was to study computer science.
Judge Alexandros Panagiotou said “the accused had shown coarseness on the unfortunate woman and had attacked her for a totally insignificant reason”.
The judge also said that the court had taken into consideration that the accused was drunk on the night in question, the fact that he took her hospital straight away, that he was getting good grades at college and the remorse that he had shown for the loss of his girlfriend.
Passing sentence, he ruled that the accused serve a nine-year prison sentence starting from the day that he was put under arrest.
