COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — On Oct. 16, Sri Lanka's cabinet spokesman said the government would neither bend nor amend the law to accommodate any individual. Four days later, the government amended the prison rules at the center of a dispute over a jailed Buddhist monk. The changes, published in Extraordinary Gazette No. 2511/30, give Buddhist monastic chapters the deciding voice on whether an imprisoned monk is stripped of his robes. They also allow convicted monks to wear robes when taken out of pri

LUCKNOW, India— Indian border security personnel have detained three Sri Lankan nationals from Jaffna and an Indian woman from Tamil Nadu near the Nepal border after they allegedly attempted to enter Nepal through a forested stretch of northern Uttar Pradesh, Indian media reported. Personnel from the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), the Indian paramilitary force responsible for guarding the country’s borders with Nepal and Bhutan, intercepted the four late Wednesday near the Rajjanwa border checkpost

JAFFNA, Sri Lanka, Oct. 23, 2026 — Lawyers representing families of the disappeared have asked the Jaffna Magistrate’s Court to examine whether the archaeologist leading the Chemmani excavation deliberately removed the term “mass grave” from his latest report on the site. The motion, filed on Thursday, concerns the third interim report by Professor Raj Somadeva of the University of Kelaniya and his colleague Anusha Wanninayake. The report, titled “Forensic Archaeological Excavation in Chemmani,