COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's former Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who played a key role defeating the LTTE, today filed a writ petition against an attempt to arrest him for allegedly embezzling Rupees 90 million of government funds.
Gotabaya, brother of former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, is facing accusations of misappropriating the amount for the construction of a memorial for his parents.
He filed the writ petition in the Appeal Court, the second most senior court in the Sri Lankan legal system.
The Rajapaksa family have been facing accusations of wrongdoing since 2015 when Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated in the presidential election.
Mahinda Rajapaksa's sons and younger brother Basil who was economic minister have spent time in jail and are currently on bail for different cases of misappropriation.
President Maithripala Sirisena has come under pressure from powerful Buddhist monks for not arresting Gotabaya.
They claim that Gotabaya was instrumental in defeating the LTTE's three-decade-long armed campaign to create a separate Tamil state.
In May 2015, the Supreme Court issued an interim order staying the arrest of Gotabaya until a fundamental rights petition he had filed in the case involving a floating armoury.
Sri Lankan troops have been largely accused of committing war crimes during the final battle in May 2009.
According to the government figures, around 20,000 people are missing due to various conflicts including the civil war with Lankan Tamils in the north and east which claimed at least 100,000 lives.
The LTTE, which led the separatist war for a separate Tamil homeland, was finally crushed by the Lankan military with the death its supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran.