The death penalty has a long history in Sri Lanka . The British restricted the death penalty after they took control of the island in 1815 to the crimes of murder and " waging war against the King . " After independence , then Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike abolished capital punishment in 1956 . However , it was quickly reintroduced after his assassination in 1959 . Opposition to the death penalty started to become increasingly widespread and the United National Party government modified the use of it in its 1978 rewrite of the constitution . Under the new arrangement , death sentences could only be carried out if authorized by the trial judge , the Attorney General and the Minister of Justice . If there was no agreement , the sentence was to be commuted to life imprisonment . The sentence was also to be ratified by the President . This clause effectively ended executions . The last execution in Sri Lanka took place in 1976
assassination
Assassination of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike
Capital punishment in Sri Lanka