Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya did not say the country's first lady was being kept under house arrest or urge women to demand her "liberation", contrary to a mocked-up news graphic shared on social media. The prime minister's media secretary told AFP she delivered no such statement about Mallika Dissanayake, while the news organisation whose graphic template was cloned said they did not publish it.
"Shouldn't women take to the streets on Women's Day for the liberation of the first lady, who is kept confined under house arrest and who the country's public has never seen even in a photograph?" reads a Sinhala-language quote attributed to Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, shared as a Facebook image on October 18, 2026.
The image, which resembles a news graphic and bears the logo of local outlet TTV News, features a photo of the prime minister.
Sri Lanka's First Lady Mallika Dissanayake maintains a low profile, rarely appearing at public events alongside her husband, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake.
Screenshot of the false post captured on October 27, 2026, with a red X added by AFP
The same graphic was shared in similar Facebook posts .
It emerged after Sri Lanka's anti-graft authority arrested former first lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa over allegations that her charity misused donations collected for a children's hospital, dealing a major blow to the once powerful Rajapaksa family (archived here and here ).
Her husband, Mahinda Rajapaksa, served as president from 2005 to 2015 and remains one of Sri Lanka's most influential political figures, despite the decline in the family's fortunes since mass protests ousted his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, from the presidency in 2022.
President Dissanayake's government has revived long-dormant graft investigations involving members of the Rajapaksa family, which dominated Sri Lankan politics for nearly two decades.
But there have been no official reports of Prime Minister Amarasuriya claiming the president's wife, Mallika Dissanayake, was under "house arrest".
"No such statement was delivered by the prime minister," Vijitha Basanayake, media secretary to Amarasuriya, told AFP in a WhatsApp message on October 21.
TTV News' chief editor Bandula Vithanarachchi also told AFP the purported graphic was fabricated.
"We did not publish such a graphic. This is not ours. The fonts are different. We don't use five lines," he told AFP over a phone call on October 28.
The news organisation shared with AFP a genuine graphic featuring the same photo of the prime minister, which appears to have been the template for the mocked-up image ( archived link ).
A comparison of the graphics shows the falsely shared image contains blurred text, and does not include a TTV News watermark above the text box.
Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared graphic (L) and TTV News' graphic
The photo of the prime minister was earlier shared on her media Facebook page in September 2024, regarding a speech about the education system and reforms that she delivered in her capacity as education minister ( archived link ).
AFP has previously debunked other false claims that relied on fabricated news graphics , a common tool for spreading misinformation in Sri Lanka.
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