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Two Tamil farmers have been remanded in custody while a 16-year-old student was released on bail, following their arrest near Kurunthurmalai, after a complaint lodged by a Sinhala Buddhist monk.
The arrests took place on 10 May, when the farmers were cultivating their own lands near Kurunthurmalai in Mullaitivu. A Buddhist monk, identified as Kalkamuwa Shantha Bodhi, arrived at the site accompanied by officers from the Sri Lankan Department of Archaeology and the police. The officials halted the farming activity, arrested the three individuals, including the teenager, and also seized the tractor they were using.
The three were subsequently taken to the occupying police station in Mullaitivu and produced before the Mullaitivu Magistrate the next day. While the 16-year-old was released on bail, the police objected to bail for the other two farmers, resulting in their remand until 15 May.
Kurunthurmalai is a historic site in the Tamil North-East that has become a flashpoint in recent years amid growing tensions over land and state-sponsored Sinhala-Buddhist expansionism. The area has witnessed repeated attempts by Buddhist monks and Sri Lankan state departments to claim historically Tamil Hindu spaces as Sinhala-Buddhist sites, often with military backing.
These arrests follow a pattern of intimidation and criminalisation of Tamil farmers and residents, particularly when they resist state encroachment or attempt to assert rights to ancestral or customary lands.
