Asoka Weerasooriya

Asoka Weerasooriya was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka in 1987 and began in practice at the Galle Bar. He joined the Attorney General's Department as State Counsel in 1988, prosecuting on behalf of the State in courts across every judicial zone of the island other than the North and the East, and returned to the Unofficial Bar in 1993. He has practised there since, and has now been at the Bar for 40 years.

During his years in the Department he directed the first successful prosecution and conviction under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in South Asia, a landmark case affirmed by the Court of Appeal.

His practice today is principally in criminal law, at trial and on appeal, and extends to fundamental rights, labour and industrial law, revenue and customs disputes, and civil and matrimonial proceedings. He appears in the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Courts exercising criminal jurisdiction — including Trials at Bar, heard before a bench of three High Court judges and among the rarest proceedings conducted in Sri Lanka — and in the District Courts, Magistrate's Courts and Labour Tribunals. He acts for private individuals, corporates, employers, financial institutions, statutory bodies, and lawyers instructing from outside Sri Lanka.

His appellate work includes matters in which convictions for murder and sentences of death were set aside, a contested homicide appeal in which all appellants were acquitted, and revision proceedings brought by a national investigative commission that were dismissed on preliminary objections. He appeared in the first prosecution for money laundering in Sri Lanka to end in an acquittal.

A substantial part of the practice carries an international dimension: matters arising from notices issued through INTERPOL, extradition proceedings both resisting and seeking surrender, and requests for mutual legal assistance between jurisdictions. He is regularly instructed by, and works alongside, counsel practising at foreign Bars, whether advising on the Sri Lankan aspects of proceedings running abroad or forming part of a joint team on a single matter.

Alongside his own chambers he has held standing appointments at three other practices: retained as permanent counsel for the firm's criminal work at Sinnadurai Sundaralingam & Balendra from 1999 to 2001; permanent senior counsel on complex legal matters at Dissanayake Amaratunga Associates from 2008 to 2012; and founding partner of Colombo Law Alliance, a boutique firm specialising in commercial and corporate law, from 2013 to 2017.

He has acted in human rights, religious liberty and fundamental rights matters on the instructions of both local and international organisations.

He serves on the Disciplinary Committee constituted under section 43(1) of the Judicature Act, appointed by the Chief Justice, and has sat on the Cabinet-appointed Criminal Law Reforms Sub-Committee and as a disciplinary member of the Incorporated Council of Legal Education. He also sits on the disciplinary committee of Sri Lanka Cricket.

He has been elected three times to the Executive Committee of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, has served as Co-Chairman of its Standing Committee on Law Development and as Chairman of its Lawyer–Police and Prisons Relations Committee, represents the Association at the Sri Lanka Judges Institute on training needs, and is a Key Resource Person conducting its criminal law lectures and courses.

Outside practice he is Chairman and independent non-executive director of Colombo Land and Development Company PLC, and was previously an independent non-executive director of Ascot Holdings PLC, now Lanka Realty Investments PLC — both listed on the Colombo Stock Exchange. He sits on the board of SOS Children's Villages Sri Lanka. Over the course of the practice he has trained more than one hundred junior lawyers in his chambers.

He is the ninth recorded practitioner in a family whose association with the Sri Lankan Bar is traced to 1826; the tenth was admitted in 2023.

His name appears in full in company filings and court records as Maurice Dayanth Asoka Weerasooriya, and is cited in practice as M. D. A. Weerasooriya. The surname is a romanisation of a Sinhala name, and the press and official records render it variously — Weerasuriya and Weerasooria among them. All refer to the same practitioner.