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video of the Sunday event opened with the 2019 winner of the
competition and reigning Mrs World, Caroline Jurie, speaking to
the audience shortly after the winner and runners-up were
announced in Colombo.
"There is a rule that you have to be married and not divorced,
so I am taking my first steps, saying that the crown goes to the
first runner-up," Jurie said, before walking across the stage to
remove the crown from Pushpika De Silva, standing with a bouquet
of flowers in her arms.
Jurie started pulling out hairpins from De Silva's hair, managed
to remove the crown and placed it on the head of the
competition's runner-up, as De Silva left the stage. Celebratory
music played in the background throughout the incident.
In a Facebook post on Monday, De Silva said she was not divorced
but separated, writing in Sinhala: "If I wasn't fit at the
beginning of this tournament they could have removed me."
The prize was returned to her on Tuesday at a news conference,
after pageant organisers confirmed she was not a divorcee. They
have also apologised to her.
The winner of the Mrs Sri Lanka contest goes on to compete in
the Mrs World contest. Jurie, who won that competition in 2020
in Las Vegas, could not immediately be reached for comment via
her social media pages.
The official Mrs. World Instagram account acknowledged De
Silva's victory in a brief post with her photo on Tuesday.
"A true queen is not a woman who snatches another woman's crown,
but a woman who secretly sets another woman's crown!!" De Silva
said in her post.
(Reporting by Karishma Singh; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
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