Update, 22 October: Police have said the man was found with two prohibited knives, and he has been released on Rs 100,000 personal bail. The details are set out in the update section below, which replaces the open questions this article originally recorded.
A man who behaved suspiciously near the satyagraha at Viharamahadevi Park in Colombo has been arrested, Hiru News reported.
The arrest was made by Kurunduwatta Police. The man is being held and questioned, Hiru News reported in a filing stamped just after midnight Colombo time.
The satyagraha is the sit-in demanding the release of Ven. Galagodaatte Gnanasara Thera, the Bodu Bala Sena general secretary who is serving a prison sentence. Bodu Bala Sena is the organisation of which he is general secretary; it is his office, not the organiser of the protest.
The first security incident reported at a protest now in its second week
The sit-in entered its sixth day on Tuesday, when the Asgiri Chapter prelate Ven. Medagama Dhammananda said senior monks had taken legal advice and hoped a process could be started leading to a presidential pardon.
This is the first arrest at the Viharamahadevi Park site that this desk has recorded. The campaign has produced incidents before — Ven. Balangoda Kassapa Thera was hospitalised from the satyagraha on 17 October — but those were medical rather than criminal.
The policing of the campaign has itself been contested. A Fort magistrate on 16 October barred 54 people connected to it, 30 of them monks, from the area around the Presidential Secretariat under section 106(1).
What the first report did not establish
The original filing was three sentences long and left most of the question open. It did not say what the man did that was considered suspicious, whether he was armed, whether he was a participant or an outsider, or whether he was suspected of intending harm. It gave no name, no age and no charge.
“Suspicious behaviour” is the reporting of a police judgement, not of an established offence, and nothing in that first report indicated he had been produced before a court.
Update, 22 October: two prohibited knives, and bail
Police have now answered almost all of it. The Police Media Division said the man is 58 years old and was found with two prohibited knives at the protest site, Hiru News reported at 7.56 p.m. on Thursday.
The knives were found when officers of the Colombo South Division Criminal Investigation Bureau searched him at the protest site, which lies in the Kurunduwatta police division, on the night of 21 October. That slightly revises this article’s original account: the search was carried out by the division’s CIB rather than by Kurunduwatta Police, whose area the site falls in.
He was produced before the Colombo Chief Magistrate’s Court on Thursday and released on personal bail of Rs 100,000. The case is set to be called again on 30 November.
On the question of whether he was a participant or an outsider — the one this article flagged as open — police said investigations had established that he had been associated with the protest march for several days.
The Colombo South Division CIB is continuing to investigate whether he remained at the protest site intending to commit an offence. Police have not alleged that he did, and no such charge has been reported.
His name has still not been released.
Not reported
The first filing appeared on Hiru’s desk after midnight Colombo time, ahead of the morning news cycle, and no other verified newsroom carried it. The 22 October update is likewise a Hiru filing of a Police Media Division statement. Ada Derana’s site has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than a month and could not be checked.
Neither filing says what offence the knives fall under, how the man came to be searched, or whether the search was connected to the court order that police brought to the same site on Thursday evening.