Colombo: A Sri Lankan man serving a 30-year sentence for involvement in an assassination attempt on the former president has tied the knot with his longtime sweetheart in prison.

Sakthivel Ilankesvaran was convicted in 2010 of conspiring to kill then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga in a 1999 suicide bomb attack blamed on ethnic Tamil rebels.
Kumaratunga lost one eye in the bombing that killed 26 people. Ilankesvaran married Gunasena Sudarshini today in a ceremony inside Welikada Prison in Colombo.
Ilankesvaran, an ethnic Tamil, said he is hoping for a presidential pardon so he can begin family life with his wife. The government defeated the Tamil rebels to end a quarter-century civil war in 2009.

PTI