MONETABRIEF — Sri Lanka’s controversial Buddhist monk, Galagodaatte Gnanasara, whose presidential pardon was revoked by the Supreme Court, claimed he was meditating when police arrested him at a hermitage.

Police seized the 51-year-old monk on Sunday after three courts issued open warrants for his arrest following his failure to return to prison after the apex court overturned his presidential pardon on September 10.

He was jailed for six years was in 2018 after being convicted of intimidating Sandya Eknaligoda, the wife of a cartoonist who had disappeared in 2010.

Resisting his jail guards, the monk insisted on addressing the TV camaras outside the court.

“I was not on the run, nor was I in hiding,” he told reporters as jail guards escorted him to a prison bus outside the Superior Courts complex in Colombo on Monday.

“I was stressed. The chief priests (Mahanayaka) advised me to go into a hermitage to meditate. I am not afraid to die,” he said, launching into a tirade against his imprisonment. “Eat my flesh or drink my blood. I am not afraid. You die only once.”

A three-judge bench ruled that the pardon granted to the monk by then-president Maithripala Sirisena in May 2019 was “arbitrary and invalid”.

The court reinstated Gnanasara’s sentence and ordered his return to prison. However, he was missing when police visited his temple at Nawala soon after the court order.

He subsequently made a few public appearances, but police did not arrest him until fresh warrants were issued.

The case against his presidential pardon was brought by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and Eknaligoda, whose husband, political cartoonist Prageeth Eknaligoda, disappeared in 2010 and remains missing.

Rights groups had opposed the clemency, arguing it undermined the rule of law.

Gnanasara, leader of the nationalist Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), or Buddhist Force, was jailed in 2018 after being convicted of intimidating Sandya Eknaligoda during proceedings linked to the investigation into her husband’s disappearance.

The monk had appeared at a magistrate’s hearing to support military intelligence officers accused of abducting Prageeth Eknaligoda, whose cartoons were critical of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa. During heated exchanges in court, Gnanasara accused the missing cartoonist and his wife of supporting Tamil extremists and damaging the reputation of the military.

The court later convicted him of criminal intimidation and sentenced him to six years in prison.

However, Sirisena personally intervened and granted Gnanasara a presidential pardon in 2019 after the monk had served less than a year of his sentence.

In 2020, then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed Monk Gnanasara as chairman of the “One Country, One Law” Presidential Task Force. Gnanasara later served a separate nine-month prison term over remarks deemed insulting to Islam and for inciting religious hostility in the Buddhist-majority nation. (Colombo/Oct 5/2026)