The Hindu Munnani, a Tamil Nadu Hindu nationalist organisation, has petitioned Sri Lanka’s Deputy High Commission in Chennai seeking intervention to save Sivarasa Anojan, the Sri Lankan Tamil migrant worker sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.
Members of the group submitted the petition at the mission’s office in Nungambakkam, Chennai, seeking revocation of the sentence, the Indian news agency ANI reported. The organisation also sought the intervention of the Indian government.
This is the first reported instance of an Indian organisation approaching a Sri Lankan diplomatic mission over the case.
Speaking to reporters afterwards, Hindu Munnani State Spokesperson A.T. Elangovan gave the group’s account of how the case began: that a social media user in Sri Lanka had posted content derogatory towards Lord Shiva, that Anojan questioned it, and that the exchange continued until he raised a question about the Prophet. Elangovan said someone then complained about the post to the Saudi authorities in Arabic, and that Anojan had tendered a public apology. “The sentence should be stayed,” he said.
Those characterisations are the organisation’s own and have not been independently confirmed.
The case so far
Anojan — identified by ANI as Sivarasa Anojan, alias Sivarajan Anojan, from Narpittimunai in Kalmunai, Eastern Province — was sentenced on 15 July by the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of three million Saudi Riyals, the maximum available under the first paragraph of Article 6 of Saudi Arabia’s Anti-Cyber Crime Law.
Sri Lankan authorities were told on 18 September that a Saudi appellate court had accepted the prosecution’s own appeal and raised the sentence to death, reclassifying the offence under Sharia law.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is to write to the King of Saudi Arabia seeking clemency, Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath told Parliament, with legal, diplomatic and consular avenues being pursued simultaneously. Former Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed has since offered to assist on humanitarian grounds, and religious leaders met at Gangaramaya to appeal for his life.
A note on dating
ANI’s report is datelined Chennai, September 24, and timestamped 13:07 IST that day, but its copy says the petition was submitted “on Wednesday” — September 23. The exact day of the submission is therefore unclear from the wire report.
ANI is an Indian news agency and the originating source for this report; no Sri Lankan newsroom had covered the petition at the time of writing.