and sentenced in absentia for exchange control offences by the Criminal Justice Commission in 1972 and was pardoned following the repeal of the Criminal Justice Commissions Act in 1977. No moves against Senanayake or Kotelawala were made, but years later J. R. Jayewardene stated that at a meeting on 13 April 1966 he was told by Colonel Sir John Kotelawala that he and Dudley Senanayake had been aware of the coup. Appeal to the Privy Council However, the condemned appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. In its ruling given on 21 December 1965, it held the Special Act of 1962 was ultra vires of the Ceylon constitution and that the Act had denied fair trial. According to the Privy Council, the law had been specially enacted to convict the men; under trial they did not have the protections that they would have had under general criminal law. It acquitted all the eleven. They were released from prison after four years in remand Of the accused, De Saram returned to his family law firm and legal practice, Douglas Liyanage was appointed Secretary to the Ministry of State in the early 1980s, Capt. John Felix went on to become the Commissioner-General of Inland Revenue and Lt. Col. Basil Jesudasan became the Chairman of Carson Cumberbatch PLC. Impact and effects of the coup The primary result of the coup attempt was that it led Sirima Bandaranaike to develop a distrust of the military. Senior appointments in the armed services and the police were made from officers trusted by the government and not on seniority as such as in the case of the IGP and the Army Commander. In the latter, B. R. Heyn was overlooked in favor of Richard Udugama. This practice was continued by successive governments and had a negative effect on the professionalism and impartiality of the armed forces and the police. Funding for the services were cut drastically in the immediate aftermath, greatly affecting its growth and disabling its ability of defending Ceylon in the long term. Military hardware procurements limited. The Navy was hard hit, many of its ships were sold and its blue water capability lost, it would not regain it former ability until the 1980s and 1990s. Inter service cooperation in the form of joint operations were suspended. Following the Bandaranaike government's electoral defeat in 1965, Dudley Senanayake became Prime Minister. To prevent a