{"id":77184,"date":"2026-04-28T21:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/28\/sri-lanka-police-buddhist-monks-cannabis-kush-airport"},"modified":"2026-04-28T21:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T12:22:09","slug":"sri-lanka-police-arrest-22-buddhist-monks-after-110kg-of-cannabis-found-in-luggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=77184","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka police arrest 22 Buddhist monks after 110kg of cannabis found in luggage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Customs officials say group allegedly hid 5kg of \u2018kush\u2019 in false walls of bags on return from Bangkok holiday<\/p>\n<p>Twenty-two Buddhist monks are in Sri Lankan police custody after customs officials found 110kg of high-grade cannabis concealed in their luggage, the largest ever drug bust at Colombo\u2019s main international airport.<\/p>\n<p>The group, mostly junior monks in training from temples across Sri Lanka, were alleged to have \u201ccarried about five kilos of the narcotic concealed within false walls in their luggage\u201d, according to a Sri Lanka customs spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/28\/sri-lanka-police-buddhist-monks-cannabis-kush-airport\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Customs officials say group allegedly hid 5kg of \u2018kush\u2019 in false walls of bags on return from Bangkok holidayTwenty-two Buddhist monks are in Sri Lankan police custody after customs officials found 110kg of high-grade cannabis concealed in their luggag&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1486,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,674,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1486"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77185,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77184\/revisions\/77185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}