Top court overturns presidential pardon for controversial Sri Lankan monk 

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court overturned on Thursday a presidential pardon granted to a hardline Buddhist monk and ordered him to serve the remainder of a six-year prison sentence for intimidating the wife of a missing cartoonist.The ruling marks a major setback for Galagodaatte Gnanasara, 51, a Buddhist nationalist monk whose critics accuse him of fuelling anti-Muslim sentiment and religious tensions in Sri Lanka.Gnanasara was sentenced in 2018 for contempt of court and intimidating Sanya Eknaligoda, the wife of political cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, who disappeared in 2010 and remains missing.A three-judge bench ruled that the pardon granted by then president Maithripala Sirisena in May 2019 was “arbitrary and invalid”.The court reinstated Gnanasara’s sentence and ordered his return to prison. The case was brought by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and Sandya Eknaligoda.The monk had interrupted a court hearing to speak in support of military intelligence officials who were accused of abducting the cartoonist.Gnanasara served less than a year of that sentence because he received a pardon from Maithripala Sirisena, who was the country’s president at the time.In his cartoons, Prageeth Eknaligoda depicted issues of media freedom, political power and social disadvantage.His work was critical of the former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, a nationalist credited with the defeat of the Tamil separatist rebels in 2009 after a bloody civil war.Eknaligoda went missing in 2010 and has not been seen since. His wife has led a campaign to trace his whereabouts, and accuses the authorities of not doing enough to investigate his disappearance.Gnanasara, who leads the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) or “Buddhist Power Force”, was a supporter of Rajapaksa and his brother Gotobaya, who also later served as president.In 2025, he received a separate nine-month prison term for insulting Islam and inciting religious hatred.Sri Lanka rarely convicts Buddhist monks, and it is almost unheard of for one to receive a custodial sentence.