Judiciary’s ‘trivial offences’ problem

The arrest of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe last week triggered a wave of local and international commentary, with some voices suggesting that he had been apprehended for a “trivial offence.” Whether the alleged misuse of public funds and public trust can ever be described as trivial is a contentious question. But there is a deeper, long-standing issue of the judiciary’s history of mishandling genuine trivial offences. This record of judicial overreach and inconsistency has steadily eroded public confidence, making it harder to distinguish legitimate accountability from political theatre.

The pattern is not new. The courts have often been instruments of humiliation and repression for citizens accused of minor or ill-defined transgressions. Consider the case of Ahnaf Jazeem, a young poet arrested under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act for publishing a collection of poems. He spent over a year and a half in detention without charge, eventually granted bail only for his case to drag on for years thereafter.

Similarly, Abdul Raheem Mazaina, was arrested for nothing more than wearing a dress that police misinterpreted as bearing the ‘Dharmachakra’. She was remanded in custody, subjected to public shame, and forced to fight for dignity in a case that should never have reached a courtroom. Shakthika Sathkumara, a writer, was detained for four months after his short story “Ardha” was deemed insulting to Buddhism. And more recently, comedian Nathasha Edirisooriya was arrested and remanded for over a month because of two jokes she made during a stand-up performance.

In each of these examples, the supposed “offences” were minor, subjective, and in many instances, protected expressions of art or speech. Yet the consequences were anything but trivial. Lives were upended, reputations shattered, and families forced into years of legal limbo. The accused often faced travel bans, difficulties finding work, and lasting social stigma. On top of this came the mental anguish and physical toll of imprisonment.

Even when courts belatedly acknowledged that rights had been violated, accountability remained elusive. In 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that Mazaina’s fundamental rights had indeed been infringed and ordered the officer in charge of the Hasalaka Police Station to pay compensation. Yet no mention was made of the magistrate who had uncritically remanded her, enabling an unjust incarceration. This selective accountability highlights the judiciary’s unwillingness to reckon with its own complicity in these miscarriages of justice.

Such failures carry a cost far beyond individual suffering. They corrode public trust in the judiciary as a whole. When the courts expend their energy on persecuting artists, comedians, and ordinary citizens for subjective or symbolic “offences,” they squander their credibility. Then, when high-profile cases emerge, such as the arrest of a former president on allegations of corruption, the public struggles to separate fact from political manipulation. The narrative of politicisation thrives precisely because the judiciary has failed to demonstrate consistency and independence in less consequential matters.

The problem is not simply overzealous policing or opportunistic prosecutions. It is also judicial passivity, the willingness of magistrates and judges to rubber-stamp remand orders, to allow trivial cases to clog the system, and to delay justice for years without meaningful oversight. A culture of deference to political or religious pressure has allowed these injustices to multiply unchecked.

The judiciary must acknowledge its role in perpetuating the culture of trivial prosecutions and begin holding its own officers accountable for the harm caused. Only then can it rebuild credibility and offer the country a justice system that is fair, consistent, and worthy of trust.