Colombo Chief Magistrate Asanga S. Bodaragama on Friday refused to lift the order requiring monks at the Viharamahadevi Park satyagraha to leave — and in the same sitting refused the Attorney General’s request for arrest warrants against them.
Two motions were filed before the court on Friday, Hiru News reported at 3.03 p.m. One came from the group holding the protest, which asked that Thursday’s order be withdrawn or varied. The other came from the Attorney General.
The magistrate rejected both. The order issued on the 22nd cannot be changed, he ruled, and if it is breached the police may take legal action as required under the Penal Code.
The Daily Mirror, filing 28 minutes later, supplies what the Attorney General’s motion was for: the issuance of arrest warrants. That request was rejected too.
Neither side got what it asked for
The shape of the ruling matters more than either half of it. The monks did not get the order lifted, so the direction to vacate the park stands. The state did not get warrants, so there is no instrument compelling anyone’s removal today. What the court left in place is a standing order the protesters are not obeying and a general power for police to prosecute under the Penal Code if they choose to use it.
That is the same position the police were in on Thursday night, when officers from Cinnamon Gardens (Kurunduwatta) Police read the order out at the park and then withdrew without removing anyone. The sit-in continued into its eighth day on Friday.
A photograph published by Hiru with its report shows the scale of what the order addresses: tents pitched on the paving around the park’s Buddha statue, bedding mats laid out, and monks and lay supporters seated among them. The protest is an encampment, not a gathering.
What the campaign wants
The satyagraha demands the release of Ven. Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thera, who is serving a sentence for contempt of court. It has already been restricted once before: a Fort magistrate on 16 October barred 54 people connected to it, 30 of them monks, from the area around the Presidential Secretariat, and the park is the site the campaign moved to.
Not reported
Neither filing gives the case number, names who applied for Thursday’s order, or says what grounds the monks advanced for varying it. Neither says why the Attorney General sought warrants nor on what basis the magistrate declined them — a refusal of the state’s own application that both outlets record without explaining. Neither says what happens at the next sitting, or whether there is one.