One man was hospitalised with gunshot wounds after an exchange of fire between suspected hunters and wildlife officers during an anti-poaching operation in Yala National Park, Lunugamvehera Police said.
The operation was carried out on Tuesday (11) by officers attached to the Yala National Park headquarters in Thanamalwila.
According to police, wildlife officers moved to arrest three men allegedly hunting animals inside the park. The hunters opened fire, police said, and the officers returned fire in self-defence.
Two of the men fled. Officers detained a 44-year-old resident of the Ellagala Left Bank area in Tissamaharama at the scene and seized two locally manufactured firearms along with 41 kilograms of venison, believed to have come from two deer.
The arrested man was produced before the Tissamaharama Magistrate’s Court and remanded until August 21.
Two accounts of who fired first
While investigating the men who escaped, Lunugamvehera Police were notified by hospital staff that a wounded man had been admitted to Debarawewa Base Hospital.
That man, still receiving treatment, gave a different version of events. He alleged that wildlife officers had lain in wait inside the park, in the upper catchment area of the Lunugamvehera Reservoir, and opened fire on him. He was shot in the right side of his back and below his right shoulder, though his condition was not reported as serious.
Police identified him as a 44-year-old cattle herder from the Tissamaharama area. Neither account has yet been tested in court.
Police and wildlife officers have launched a joint operation to trace the remaining suspect.
Yala, Sri Lanka’s most visited national park, sits on the southeastern boundary of Hambantota and Monaragala districts and has long drawn armed poachers targeting deer for the illegal meat trade. Wildlife officers made a series of poaching arrests in the park’s restricted zones earlier this year.
