Sri Lanka Releases Over 1,000 Convicts from Overcrowded Prisons for Christmas
Colombo: Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has granted amnesty to more than 1,000 convicts and released them from jails across the country to commemorate Christmas, according to a prisons official. Among those freed were individuals imprisoned for failing to pay outstanding fines, said Prison Commissioner Gamini Dissanayake.
This move follows a similar initiative in May, where an equal number of convicts were released to celebrate Vesak, a holiday that honors the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. The recent pardons come after a weeklong anti-narcotics operation, supported by the military, resulted in the arrest of nearly 15,000 individuals, which was halted on Christmas eve.
During the operation, 13,666 suspects were apprehended, while approximately 1,100 addicts were sent for compulsory rehabilitation at a military-run facility, as stated in a police report. Sri Lanka’s prisons are consistently plagued by overcrowding, with official data showing that as of Friday, the facilities designed to accommodate 11,000 inmates currently hold nearly 30,000.
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