Bodu Bala Sena general secretary Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thera is reportedly untraceable, four days after the Supreme Court annulled the presidential pardon that released him from prison in 2019 and left him owing the balance of a six-year sentence, the Daily Mirror reported.
Prison officials went to his temple in Nawala, Rajagiriya, to begin the process of returning him to custody. Monks at the temple told the officials they did not know where he was.
Why the prisons cannot simply collect him
A prison official told the paper that prison authorities can take no further step unless the Thera surrenders to police or police take him into custody. That is the practical position the ruling has created: the Supreme Court has restored a sentence, but the Department of Prisons only receives a person — it does not go out and find one. Until police act, or he presents himself, the remainder of the sentence exists on paper and nowhere else.
What the court decided
A three-judge bench ruled on 10 September that the pardon granted by then-President Maithripala Sirisena in May 2019 was null and void, holding the decision arbitrary and a violation of public trust and the principles of natural justice.
Gnanasara Thera had been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for contempt of court, over his conduct at the Homagama Magistrate’s Court in 2016 during proceedings on the disappearance of journalist Prageeth Ekneligoda. He had served roughly nine months when the pardon came. He is now required to serve what is left of it, subject to the applicable legal and prison procedures.
The BBS response
A senior BBS official told the Daily Mirror that ethnic tensions in the country had eased after Zahran Hashim was identified as the leader of the National Thawheed Jama’ath, which the official said was responsible for the Easter Sunday attacks — and claimed Gnanasara Thera had never attempted to create ethnic conflict.
The paper places this against a recent meeting between representatives of the All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, at which the ACJU thanked the government for maintaining ethnic harmony over the past two years and asked for action against hate speech spread on social media.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not say when prison officials visited the temple, whether police have opened any search, whether a warrant or court order has been issued for his arrest, or how much of the six-year term remains to be served. It quotes the prison official and the BBS official without naming either. No comment from the Prisons Department, the police or Gnanasara Thera’s lawyers is reported.
Ada Derana was unreachable behind its CloudFront block. Neither NewsFirst, Hiru News, The Island nor Colombo Gazette carried the development on their listings at the time of writing, so this account rests on the Daily Mirror alone.
