Former Attorney General and Chairman of the LLRC, President’s Counsel Chitta Ranjan De Silva, popularly known as C.R. De Silva, has passed away in a private hospital this morning.

A former Attorney General and Solicitor General of Sri Lanka, he was the Chairmen of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).

Educated at the prestigious Royal College Colombo, De Silva entered the Sri Lanka Law College and was called to the Bar in 1974, starting his legal practice thereafter.

Two years later he joined the Attorney General’s Department as a State Counsel in May 1976. In 1984 he was promoted as a Senior State Counsel and was appointed Deputy Solicitor General in October 1992.

He took silk as a President’s Counsel on February 19, 1997 after being appointed as an Additional Solicitor General in December 1996. In October 1999 he was appointed as the Solicitor General of Sri Lanka, a post he would hold till 2007.

For 10 years since 1997 he was the head of the Criminal Division of the Attorney General’s Department. In April 2007 he was appointed as the Attorney General of Sri Lanka. He retired in early 2009.

During his career as a public prosecutor in the Attorney General’s Department he appeared on behalf of the state for some of the most significant criminal cases in the country, involving the assassination of the High Court Judge of Colombo, Sarath Ambepitiya.

De Silva has represented the Government of Sri Lanka in a number of International Bilateral Air Traffic Negotiations held in New Delhi, Australia, Greece and Sri Lanka.

He has also been a member of Sri Lankan delegations to the Human Rights Committee under the optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

He has served as a lecturer and examiner at the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University and is an examiner at the Sri Lanka Law College.

He is also a member of the Law Commission of Sri Lanka and had served as a member of the Board of Management of Child Protection Authority, Drug Control Board and the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine.