Weeks of protests by the social media-driven Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) in India led to the resignation of the country's education minister, but a purported quote from Sri Lanka's foreign minister commenting on the demonstration is fabricated. A spokesperson for the minister has denied he made the remarks, and the news graphic reporting on the fabricated quote is credited to a news outlet that does not exist.
"We are closely monitoring the situation in India, but we have no intention of intervening. Our experience is that major crises can arise from struggles," reads a Sinhala-language news graphic attributed to Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath shared on Facebook on July 23, 2026.
The graphic features an image of Herath and carries the label of a supposed news outlet called "Lanka X News".
Similar claims circulated elsewhere on Facebook as thousands of protesters gathered in New Delhi to demand the resignation of India's education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, and for wider education reforms ( archived link).
The protests have evolved to include concerns over unemployment, opportunities for young people and what critics brand as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's increasingly authoritarian style of governance. Pradhan resigned on July 25 ( archived link).
The post was also shared in public Facebook groups with more than 200,000 members in total.
Some users appear to believe the quote is genuinely from Herath, and that it showed his government was afraid the protests would spread to Sri Lanka and topple the rule of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna party, which was behind two deadly insurrections in the 1970s and 1980s that killed tens of thousands of people before renouncing violence and coming to power in the last election in 2024 ( archived link).
"They have been trying to get people to come and storm the parliament and create a crisis in the country. Now they are giving a message to India that a major crisis can arise through the struggle," one user wrote, while another commented: "Why do you look so scared? Remember what goes around comes around."
But the graphic was fabricated and did not come from a real news outlet.
A combination of reverse image and keyword searches did not find any credible Sri Lanka-based news outlets named "Lanka X News."
Searches for the URL shown in the fabricated graphic "www.lankaXnews.lk" on two search engines returned no results.
Sakeef Sam, a spokesperson for the minister, also denied the claim.
"We can confirm that the minister has not made such a statement or similar remarks anywhere or in any media," he told AFP by phone on July 28.
The image used in the fabricated news graphic was originally posted on the minister's official Facebook account on March 18 ( archived link).
According to the caption, the photograph was taken while the minister was addressing an event to launch a local tourism platform in Colombo.
AFP has previously debunked false claims targeting government ministers of Sri Lanka.