A total of 461 suspects were arrested over the past 24 hours during island-wide crime and drug prevention operations, police said on Monday.
Some 25,482 individuals were searched in the course of the operations.
Of those detained, 20 were identified as being directly connected to criminal offences, while open warrants had been issued in respect of 116 of the suspects. A further 78 people were arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.
A rolling daily tally
The figures form part of the sustained national crackdown on narcotics and organised crime run under the “A Nation United” programme, known in Sinhala as Ratama Ekata. Arrest numbers are released as a rolling daily count rather than as the result of a single operation, and the totals move from day to day.
For comparison, police reported 508 arrests from 27,054 searches for operations conducted on August 6. Monday’s figures represent a somewhat smaller sweep on both measures.
The scale of the drive has become inseparable from the strain on Sri Lanka’s prisons. At a meeting of the government’s anti-drug steering council on the same day, officials discussed the possibility of imposing the death penalty for drug offences, and confirmed that amendments to narcotics and bail law are close to being gazetted.
NewsFirst’s report did not give a breakdown of narcotics seized during the 24-hour period, identify the police divisions involved, or name a quoting officer. No other verified newsroom had published the same daily figures at the time of writing.
Source: NewsFirst.
