Gnansara gets 6-month rigorous imprisonment

• First time the monk has been found guilty by a court of law
• Ordered to pay Rs. 50,000 as compensation to Eknaliagoda

Controversial monk Galagodaatte Gnansara Thero was sentenced to six months’ rigorous imprisonment yesterday for intimidating the wife of missing cartoonist Pradeep Eknaliagoda. 

The Homagama Magistrate Court found him guilty of criminal conduct outside the courthouse where he threatened violence against Sandya Eknaligoda after a court session on her husband’s disappearance.

Sandya Eknaliagoda has been fighting for justice for her missing husband since his disappearance in 2010. The hard-line monk was present at the court hearings in support of the military intelligence officers who have been arrested in connection with the disappearance. 

The monk was found guilty on two counts under the penal code with a maximum sentence of two years in prison, an unspecified fine and or both. The magistrate gave him six months of hard labour (rigorous imprisonment) and fined him Rs. 1,500. Further, Gnanasara Thero was ordered to pay Rs. 50,000 as compensation to Eknaliagoda. 

This is the first time the monk has been found guilty by a court of law in the country. The monk, known for his hard-line stance, has another case in the Colombo High Court for Contempt of Court for his behaviour inside the courthouse during the Eknaliagoda hearings. 

Last year he spent close to a month hiding from the Sri Lanka Police, prompting the Government to deploy several police teams to arrest the monk. The monk later gave himself up to the Police and they recorded his statement before granting him bail. 

A Reuters report said the case was seen as a test of the independence of the judiciary.

In 2016, Gnanasara interrupted a court hearing over the abduction of the journalist Eknaligoda, in which military intelligence officials were accused.

He shouted at the judge and lawyers because the military officials had not been allowed bail, and threatened Eknaligoda’s wife.

The judge rejected Gnanasara’s request to make a statement after he expressed disagreement with the sentence. He was taken to prison while fellow monks, who attended the hearing in his support, chanted Buddhist scriptures.

Gnanasara faces a separate contempt of court case over the same incident. It was not immediately clear if he would appeal against Thursday’s sentence.

Dilantha Vithanage, the chief executive of the monk’s BBS group, told Reuters it would appeal against the verdict.

The monk has faced accusations in cases regarding anti-Muslim violence, hate speech, and defaming the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

The BBS, led by Gnanasara, has been alleged by Muslims and some government ministers to have stirred up violence against Muslims and Christian, mainly in Buddhist-dominated parts of Sri Lanka, allegations the monk has denied.

In 2014, Gnanasara signed a pact with Myanmar’s Ashin Wirathu, who once called himself “the Burmese bin Laden” in what they called the first step in a broad alliance against conversions by Islamists in the region.