Facebook Comment, Death Sentence: The Long Road To Anojan Sivarasa’s Blasphemy Case In Saudi Arabia

For a young migrant worker who travelled to Saudi Arabia looking for work, the distance between a Facebook comment and a death sentence is almost impossible to comprehend. Yet that is the distance Anojan Sivarasa now finds himself facing.

Sivarasa, a Sri Lankan national from Natpittimunai near Kalmunai in the Eastern Province, went to Saudi Arabia for employment. He was working there when a social-media argument that began thousands of kilometres away in Sri Lanka drew him into a case involving allegations of blasphemy against Islam and Prophet Muhammad.

A Saudi appellate court has since increased his original five-year prison sentence and fine to death.

His case has now moved beyond a courtroom. Sri Lanka is pursuing a Supreme Court appeal in Saudi Arabia while also seeking diplomatic and humanitarian intervention. A four-member legal delegation travelled to Saudi Arabia this week to work with Saudi law firms and finalise the appeal. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is also expected to seek clemency from the Saudi king.

There is, however, a detail that has already become muddled in the reporting: several international reports describe Sivarasa as 24, while some Sri Lankan reports identify him as 26. The Foreign Ministry has not publicly stated his age in its official case updates.

From A Dog On A Pilgrimage To A Facebook Comment

The story began not in Saudi Arabia, but along Sri Lanka’s annual Pada Yatra pilgrimage to the Kataragama Murugan temple.

A stray dog that had followed Hindu pilgrims for hundreds of kilometres became a social-media curiosity. Named Subramani, the dog travelled with the pilgrims and became part of the online conversation surrounding the pilgrimage.

Then came a video. It appeared to show a Muslim man kicking the dog in Kalmunai. The footage spread rapidly and triggered anger online. The man was arrested over the incident and later released on bail, according to reports. What followed was no longer simply a dispute about an animal. Religious insults began ricocheting through social media, with users trading hostile comments about Hindu and Muslim beliefs.

It was in that increasingly poisonous online exchange that Sivarasa became involved.

According to reporting based on the case, a Facebook user had posted a derogatory comment about a Hindu deity. Sivarasa responded in Tamil with a comment that allegedly insulted Prophet Muhammad and Islam. He subsequently deleted the comment and apologised. But deletion did not erase the digital trail. A screenshot was reportedly taken and shared with his employer.

His employment was terminated and the matter was brought to Saudi authorities. Sivarasa was arrested in July. His phone and computer were reportedly seized, and the social-media comment became the centre of a criminal case in a country where online speech touching on religion can carry severe penalties.

The irony is stark: a controversy born around a pilgrimage in Sri Lanka travelled through Facebook to Saudi Arabia, where the legal consequences were vastly more serious than anything that had happened in the original dispute.

How A Five-Year Sentence Became A Death Penalty

Sivarasa was initially sentenced by the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court to five years in prison and fined three million Saudi riyals — about $800,000 — under Saudi Arabia’s Anti-Cyber Crime Law.

Article 6 of that law provides for up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to three million riyals for producing, preparing, transmitting or storing electronic material that infringes public order, religious values, public morals or privacy.

That, however, was not the end of the case.

Sivarasa’s side appealed against the sentence. Saudi prosecutors also challenged the original punishment, seeking a harsher legal treatment. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath later told Parliament that the prosecution sought to have the case dealt with under Sharia law rather than the cybercrime legislation. The appellate court subsequently imposed the death penalty.

That distinction is central to understanding the case.

Saudi Arabia does not have a single comprehensive codified penal code. Its courts operate within a legal system based on Sharia, alongside royal decrees and specific legislation. Offences can fall into categories including hudud, qisas and ta’zir, the latter allowing judges considerable discretion in determining punishment for offences not carrying a fixed penalty.

Saudi law permits death as a punishment for blasphemy against Islam. The US State Department has noted, however, that Saudi courts had not sentenced people to death for blasphemy since 1992 in the period covered by its reports. That makes Sivarasa’s case particularly significant: a social-media offence initially handled under the cybercrime framework has now reached the capital-punishment stage through a Sharia-based prosecution.

The wider use of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia is nevertheless substantial. Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi Arabia carried out at least 322 executions by early December 2025, an unprecedented annual surge, while more than 2,000 executions had been recorded since King Salman came to the throne in 2015. Foreign nationals have made up a substantial share of those executed.

What Can Sri Lanka Do Now?

For Sivarasa, the legal clock has not stopped.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry said the embassy in Riyadh had been informed verbally by Sivarasa’s lawyer that the punishment had been enhanced to capital punishment, but that it was awaiting the formal written judgment setting out the legal basis. The ministry said the judgment could be appealed before Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court within the stipulated period.

That appeal is now being prepared. A Sri Lankan delegation led by Additional Solicitor General Azard Navavi travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet the Saudi firms retained by the Foreign Ministry, finalise the documents and discuss the case with Saudi officials.

There is also a diplomatic route. President Dissanayake has instructed officials to pursue continued engagement with Saudi authorities, while a separate parliamentary delegation is expected to carry a clemency appeal to the Saudi king. Religious leaders in Sri Lanka have also appealed for state intervention.

None of these steps guarantees relief. But they leave several possible avenues open: an appeal before the Saudi Supreme Court, a request for commutation, diplomatic negotiations and a royal pardon or clemency appeal.

For now, the final legal document is as important as the Facebook screenshot that began the case. One captured a sentence typed during an online quarrel; the other will determine the legal path that follows.