In observance of Christmas, over 1,000 prisoners nationwide were freed from prisons by Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, a prisons official announced on Monday.
According to Prison Commissioner Gamini Dissanayake, 1,004 Sri Lankans who had been imprisoned for failing to pay unpaid fines were released on Monday.
A comparable number of prisoners were released in May to commemorate Vesak, a celebration honoring the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death, in Sri Lanka, a country where Buddhism predominates.
The most recent pardon was granted following around 15,000 arrests made by police during a week-long anti-drug campaign supported by the military that was called off on Christmas Eve.
According to a police statement, 13,666 suspects were taken into custody and roughly 1,100 addicts were placed in a military-run facility for mandatory rehabilitation.
The island nation’s jails are chronically overcrowded.
As of Friday, there were nearly 30,000 inmates in facilities designed to hold 11,000, according to official data.