A police officer arrested over the murder of a man whose body was found submerged in the Gin Ganga has been remanded until August 17.
The order was issued on Tuesday after the suspect was produced before Baddegama Magistrate Sanath Nanayakkara, NewsFirst reported.
The victim
The investigation concerns the killing of a man identified as Almeida, whose body was recovered from the river after he had allegedly been murdered and his remains disposed of in the water.
Investigators suspect the victim was a key gunman linked to the organised crime figure known as “Loku Patti.”
What has not been established
The officer’s rank, station and the nature of the alleged involvement have not been disclosed, and no account has been reported of how investigators came to identify a serving police officer as a suspect. Neither the date of the killing nor the date the body was recovered has been given.
The arrest lands in the middle of a sustained police campaign against organised crime. Police recorded 22 shootings and 15 deaths in the first seven months of 2026, attributing much of the violence to rival drug trafficking networks, and the Cabinet spokesman said on the same day that the Inspector General of Police is personally leading operations against underworld networks.
NewsFirst is the only verified newsroom to have carried the remand order. Ada Derana’s news feed, the Daily Mirror front page and the Hiru and Ada Derana Sinhala services had not published an account of it at the time of writing.
