The Sri Lanka Navy and the Police Special Task Force (STF) have arrested a 49-year-old man with 7,000 foreign cigarettes at Mullipuram in the Puttalam district.
The operation followed intelligence received by SLNS Thambapanni, the Northwestern Naval Command’s shore establishment. Naval personnel from SLNS Vijaya joined STF officers to search a house in the Mullipuram area, where they found the stock of foreign cigarettes allegedly held illegally.
The suspect is a resident of Norochcholai, the coastal town north of Puttalam best known as the site of the country’s only coal power station. Hiru News reported that the arrest was made on Sunday and that the suspect and the seized cigarettes were handed over to the Puttalam Police station for further legal action.
A steady stream of seizures
Foreign cigarettes carry high import duties in Sri Lanka, and the gap between duty-paid and smuggled prices has sustained a persistent trade in untaxed stock. Most publicised detections are made at Bandaranaike International Airport, where couriers are intercepted with cartons in baggage — including a Rs. 6 million haul arriving from Dubai this month and a passenger stopped on a Chennai flight in early August.
Seizures inland and along the coast point to the distribution end of the same trade. The Navy, which patrols the Gulf of Mannar and the northwestern coastline, regularly reports interdictions of contraband moved by sea, including kendu leaf used in beedi manufacture.
Sources: Daily Mirror, Hiru News.
