“Miss Sri Lanka” winner Pushpika De Silva was taken to the hospital Sunday night, after another pageant winner leaped onto the stage to take her crown.
Moments after being crowned “Miss Sri Lanka 2021,” fellow Sri Lankan and 2020 “Miss World” winner Caroline Jurie leaped onstage. In front of the assembled audience at the Nelum Pokuna Theatre in Colombo, Jurie grabbed the microphone to announce she was acting based on a rule disqualifying divorcees from winning the title.
“There is a rule that prevents women who have already been married and are divorced, so I am taking steps to make the crown go to second place,” Jurie said. In the ensuing chaos, Jurie pulled the crown from De Silva’s head and placed it on the runner-up, who began to cry as Jurie embraced her.
De Silva was reportedly hospitalized for head injuries and “trauma” sustained in the scuffle. “I know you are expecting my response to the unexpected incident that happened,” she later wrote on her Facebook page. “Even though I have a lot to say, I will post only the essential things here,’’
“The pain of my skull when my crown was snatched from my head by the world married beauty queen, the pain I felt when I lost the crown,” De Silva said. “I say a true queen is not a woman who snatches another woman’s crown, but a woman who [helps straighten] another woman’s crown!!”
De Silva also said she had “already taken the necessary legal action against the injustice and humiliation caused to me at the event.” She was re-crowned and certified as the winner on Monday. A video of the event has gone viral, with over 288,000 views as of the time of this writing.
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