In a significant case of the judiciary reversing an executive decision, Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court on Thursday (September 10, 2026) overturned a presidential pardon granted to a reactionary Buddhist monk.
The ruling assumes significance in the Sinhala Buddhist-majority island nation, where the Buddhist clergy wields considerable religious influence and political power . In May 2019, then President Maithripala Sirisena pardoned controversial monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara ‘Thero’ [as Buddhist priests in Sri Lanka are respectfully referred to], leader of the hardline Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force or BBS), who was serving prison term at the time, following conviction for contempt of court and criminal intimidation. Colombo-based non-governmental organisation Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and Sandya Eknaligoda , wife of dissident political cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, forcibly disappeared since 2010, had challenged the pardon.
Seven years later, the Supreme Court has ruled that President Sirisena’s action was “arbitrary”, and declared it “null and void”.
In January 2016, Gnanasara Thero stormed the courtroom and openly threatened Ms. In 2024, the Colombo High Court sentenced him to four years’ rigorous imprisonment for fanning hatred against Muslims in a 2016 press conference. Eknaligoda, when a magistrate court was hearing a case of her disappeared husband. Two years after President Sirisena pardoned the monk, his successor Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed Gnanasara Thero to a Presidential Task Force to draft proposals on legal reforms, a move widely criticised by rights defenders. He was later granted bail.
