Court throws out police bid to block Tamil council reclaiming road from illegal vihara

The Mallakam Magistrates Court has dismissed an application by Palaly Police seeking to prevent the Valikamam North Pradeshiya Sabha from recovering a council-owned road occupied within the premises of the illegally constructed Tissa Vihara in Thaiyiddy, in a rare judicial rebuff to state efforts to shield the Buddhist shrine.

Delivering its order on Thursday, the court found no basis to conclude that removing the fence obstructing the road would cause a breach of the peace or undermine ethnic reconciliation. It also fully discharged the councils chairman, S. Sugirthan, and the council secretary from the case.

The dispute centres on Bhavani Road, which belongs to the Valikamam North Pradeshiya Sabha but lies within the area occupied by the vihara. The road was surveyed on 28 April as part of the councils efforts to reclaim it. Following the survey, Sugirthan wrote to the viharas chief monk instructing him to remove the fence blocking the road, stating that if he did not, the council would remove it and recover the costs from him.

The monk then lodged a complaint with Palaly Police, alleging that the council was attempting to forcibly remove the viharas fence. Police summoned Sugirthan and pressed him to abandon the councils plans, warning that removing the fence could trigger tensions between communities, undermine reconciliation and lead to a breach of the peace.

Sugirthan rejected the request, maintaining that the road belonged to the Pradeshiya Sabha and had been unlawfully occupied by the vihara, and said the council would proceed. Palaly Police subsequently filed an application at the Mallakam Magistrates Court in May seeking an order to stop it.

During proceedings, the court said the matter could not be considered on a one-sided basis and summoned Sugirthan and the council secretary to appear on 11 May. The ITAK general secretary and Presidents Counsel M. A. Sumanthiran appeared for the two officials and opposed the police application.

Speaking to the media after the ruling, Sugirthan said the Pradeshiya Sabha would soon take steps to recover the road and restore it for public transport.

A shrine with no legal authorisation

The Tissa Vihara has become the most prominent symbol of Sinhalisation in the Jaffna peninsula. Built on six acres of privately owned Tamil land in Kankesanthurai, an area held for decades under heavy military occupation, the shrine has no legal authorisation, a fact confirmed at a meeting chaired by Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake in January 2025, which also established that it was constructed within what had been designated a high security zone. The Northern Province governor has acknowledged that landowners hold documentation proving private ownership, and that the land officially allocated to the vihara lies elsewhere.

Its construction has been closely bound up with the military. In 2022 General Shavendra Silva, the Chief of Defence Staff and Army Commander, who is barred from entering the United States over war crimes against Tamils, attended a ceremony to install Buddhist relics at the vihara, and the following year the Commander of Security Forces (Jaffna) presided over the unveiling of the reconstructed stupas pinnacle.

Tamils in Thaiyiddy have protested on every full moon day for years demanding the shrines removal and the return of their ancestral land, with landowners, university students and Tamil parties joining demonstrations that have repeatedly been met by heavy police deployments. In December, five Tamils were arrested during one such protest, among them the civil society leader Velan Swamigal and the Valikamam East Divisional Council chairman Thiyagaraja Nirosh. Proposals to acquire a further eight acres for the viharas expansion, and government offers of compensation or alternative land in place of returning the property, have been rejected by landowners insisting the land is theirs.

Thursdays ruling comes days after ITAK accused the Department of Archaeology of carrying out religious construction at the contested Kanniya hot springs in Trincomalee in defiance of a 2020 court order, part of what Tamil politicians describe as a documented pattern in which state institutions are used to advance Buddhist construction across the North-East.