Judge probing Mullaitivu mass grave flees Lanka citing threats

CHENNAI: Mullaitivu district judge T Saravanarajah has resigned from the post and is believed to have escaped from Sri Lanka citing death threats. The district is located in the northern province of the nation.

Saravanarajah was investigating the Kokkuthoduvai mass grave in the district, a suspected mass burial of LTTE women cadres killed extrajudicially during the Sri Lankan civil war. The judge, who ordered the removal of an illegally built Buddhist shrine from the Kurunthurmalai Murugan temple few months ago, was under severe pressure from the Sri Lankan government. He was asked to change the order by the higher-ups in the judiciary.

Hinting pressure from the ruling Sinhala government and MPs, the judge said that he was facing a threat to his life and decided to resign from the post as district judge, Sri Lankan media reported.

Meanwhile, Tamil activists in Lanka are up in arms against the government following the judge’s resignation. Saying that even a judge cannot withstand the pressure tactics from the rulers, they questioned the safety of ordinary Tamil in the northeast province of the nation.

‘Weaponising archaeology for Budhisising the North East resulted in the resignation and exile of a Tamil judge. If a judge can be subjected to this level of harassment by the state and Buddhist nationalists imagine the plight of minority civilians,” said Mahendran Thiruvarangan, a member of the Jaffna People’s Forum for co-existence in micro-blogging platform X.