Police opened fire on a vehicle at a checkpoint in Narahenpita on Saturday afternoon to halt an alleged abduction, rescuing a 26-year-old woman who had been taken from the grounds of the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BMICH) in Colombo.

Narahenpita Police received an alert at about 1.30 p.m. that a young woman had been forcibly driven away from the BMICH premises. Officers moved to intercept the vehicle as it travelled from Narahenpita towards Nawala. The driver ignored repeated signals to stop and kept going, and officers opened fire on the Narahenpita–Nawala Road.

The driver abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot. Police searching it found the woman inside and rescued her. She was later produced before the Colombo Judicial Medical Officer for examination.

Investigators identify the driver as the woman’s boyfriend

Investigations identified the fleeing driver as the woman’s boyfriend, the Daily Mirror and Hiru News both reported. He and the woman are residents of the Weligama and Midigama areas in the Matara district.

The woman had gone to the BMICH with her family for a graduation ceremony — the University of Colombo’s Sripalee Campus, according to the Daily Mirror — and had attended without telling her boyfriend. It was her father who alerted police.

Police said the car belonged to the boyfriend, and that the woman’s father had driven it to the venue.

The vehicle has been taken into custody and is held at the Cinnamon Gardens Police Station, which is conducting further investigations. Operations to trace the suspect were under way on Saturday evening.

Accounts differ on the vehicle and the number involved

Ada Derana described the vehicle as a van and referred to “abductors” in the plural in its opening line, while the Daily Mirror and Hiru News both described a car with a single driver. Ada Derana did not report any relationship between the suspect and the woman, and said police were seeking one absconding suspect.

Hiru’s earlier English report also described the incident only as a driver who ignored orders to stop at a roadblock, without the graduation ceremony or the relationship; its fuller Sinhala account followed later in the evening.

Sources