Bodu Bala Sena secretary Ven. Galagodaaththe Gnanasara Thera appeared before the Colombo High Court on Wednesday as the case filed against him by the Attorney General over alleged remarks insulting Islam was taken up, the Daily Mirror reported.
The case was called before High Court Judge Buddhika C. Ragala, who ordered that it be taken up again on 30 September.
He was reported untraceable on Monday
The appearance sits awkwardly against what was reported two days earlier, and neither account has been reconciled by any outlet.
On 14 September the Daily Mirror reported that Gnanasara Thera was untraceable. Prison officials had gone to his temple in Nawala, Rajagiriya, to begin returning him to custody, and monks there told them they did not know where he was. A prison official told the paper that the Department of Prisons could take no further step unless he surrendered to police or police took him into custody.
That followed the Supreme Court’s ruling on 10 September annulling the presidential pardon granted by then-President Maithripala Sirisena in May 2019, which had released him after roughly nine months of a six-year sentence for contempt of court. The court held the pardon arbitrary and a violation of public trust, leaving the balance of that sentence outstanding.
So a monk described on Monday as untraceable, and owing time on a restored prison sentence, walked into the Colombo High Court on Wednesday. The Daily Mirror’s report on Wednesday makes no mention of the earlier account, of the annulled pardon, or of the contempt sentence. It does not say whether he was taken into custody at court, whether police were present, or whether the question of the outstanding sentence was raised before Judge Ragala.
Whether he was ever genuinely untraceable, or simply not at the temple when officials called, is not established by either report.
A separate case from the contempt sentence
The matter before Judge Ragala is distinct from the contempt conviction that the pardon covered. It is a prosecution brought by the Attorney General over alleged statements concerning Islam, which the indictment treats as conduct capable of disrupting communal harmony. The Daily Mirror’s report does not quote the remarks, give the date they were allegedly made, state the charges or the statute relied on, or say how the accused has pleaded.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror does not say what happened procedurally on Wednesday beyond the adjournment — whether evidence was led, whether the matter was fixed for trial, or what the 30 September date is for. It does not report any submission by his counsel or by the prosecution, and carries no comment from the Bodu Bala Sena.
Neither NewsFirst nor Hiru News had filed on the appearance at the time of writing, and Ada Derana was unreachable behind a CloudFront block, so this account rests on a single source.
