After a spanking, it's freedom at last for the Backside Boys
It was no laughing matter when a few schoolboys celebrating their A’level results climbed Pidurangala rock last month; and, on its plateau, chose to take a reverse selfie of their buttocks whilst giving the Full Monty to the topless damsels of Sigiriya residing next door on a patricide king’s rock.
But whilst Kashyapa’s maidens had bared their breasts to world acclaim and got away with it for centuries, three of the Backside Boys were not so lucky when the law enforcing authorities took a good hard look at a leaked photograph and decided their cheeky exhibitionism was obscene.
Three of them were charged with obscenity under an Archeological Act, which banned live exhibition, what it readily protected in inert art. They were arrested and produced in court and remanded for nearly two weeks. And the lark sparked the question: Was it an overkill? A system that allows immediate bail to those charged with corruption, even murder but takes a dim view of a schoolboy indulging in a harmless prank on an isolated rock peak that did not offend or cause harm to anyone in sight?
After a spanking in the slammer, an understanding judge discharged the three schoolboys this Wednesday with a stern warning not to repeat the alleged indecency.
Perhaps Lanka’s farmers, too, should be put on notice of the legal peril facing them when they next plough their field set betwixt the tank and the temple, clad in nothing but a G- string -- like strippers do at an American nightclub.