Sri Lanka Supreme Court Overturns Presidential Pardon for Hardline Buddhist Monk

According to a September 10, 2026 report by The Hindu's international edition, Sri Lanka's Supreme Court overturned a presidential pardon granted in May 2019 by former President Maithripala Sirisena to the hardline Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara. The court ruled that the executive action was "arbitrary" and "null and void". The decision ends a seven-year legal challenge and formally rejects the protection that executive power extended to an inciter of hatred.

The challenge was brought by the Colombo-based Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), a non-governmental organization, and Sandya Eknaligoda, the wife of the dissenting political cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, who was forcibly disappeared in 2010. Sandya had personal reason to fear Gnanasara: in January 2016, the monk entered a lower court hearing her husband's disappearance case and openly threatened the wife who was seeking answers in court.

Gnanasara founded the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) in 2012 and became known for anti-Muslim rhetoric and mobilization. After Sri Lanka's civil war ended in 2009, anti-Muslim sentiment grew through agitation led by monks, and Gnanasara and his organization became emblematic of that current.

The 2019 pardon was not an isolated event. Two years later, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who succeeded Sirisena, appointed Gnanasara to a presidential task force on legal reform, drawing broad condemnation from human-rights defenders. In 2024, the Colombo High Court sentenced him to four years of rigorous imprisonment for a 2016 press conference that incited anti-Muslim hatred. He was later released on bail, and the extent of his actual time in custody is unclear.

The Supreme Court's ruling carries broad significance in Sri Lanka, where monks hold considerable religious and political influence. It affirms a principle: when executive power bypasses a judicial conviction in the name of "forgiveness", the judiciary has the authority to overturn that act. Sandya and other civil-society activists used seven years of litigation to bring an executive decision under judicial review, stripping a convicted inciter of hatred of the immunity granted by a president. Prageeth has been forcibly disappeared since 2010 and his whereabouts remain unknown.