A Chinese national described by police as the main suspect in the abduction and murder of another Chinese national at Colombo Port City has been arrested — inside Port City itself, 43 days after the killing.
The suspect, aged 54, was taken into custody on Friday (4) and was wearing a wig as a disguise, Hiru News reported, citing the Colombo Crimes Division. Police plan to produce him before court to obtain a detention order.
Four other Chinese nationals are already in custody over the case. Two were arrested at Bandaranaike International Airport as they attempted to leave the country in the days around the killing, and two more were traced to Sigiriya in late August after altering their appearances and changing their names.
The case
The victim was seized during a clash between two groups of Chinese nationals at Port City in the early hours of 23 July, forced into a car, and killed. Ada Derana reported that three Chinese nationals were assaulted in the confrontation before one of them was abducted.
Hiru News set out how the body was found, detail no earlier report carried. Officers from the Karadana police post, attached to the Eheliyagoda station, discovered it the same day in a dilapidated house on rambutan-cultivated land towards Getahetta, covered with laterite stones. A suspicious luxury car was located that day on a road near the Nugadanda Kovil.
The victim was later identified as Hao Song, who entered Sri Lanka from Cambodia in April on a Suriname passport and whom investigators suspected of involvement in computer-based fraud. A post-mortem examination found he died of internal injuries from stab wounds.
Two accounts that do not match
The two outlets differ on the suspect’s status. Hiru News calls him the main suspect; Ada Derana describes him only as “one of the suspects wanted in connection with the incident.”
Hiru News also dates the Sigiriya arrests to “the 30th of last month.” Its own reporting on 28 August, and accounts by Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror the following day, placed that arrest on Friday 28 August, with the two men produced in court and given 24-hour detention orders over the weekend. The later date appears to conflate the court appearance with the arrest.
Not reported
Neither outlet named the arrested man, nor said whether he is the third of the three suspects whose photographs police released in August — two of whom were the men taken in Sigiriya. Neither explained how his designation as the main suspect sits alongside the two men detained at the airport in July, and neither said whether he had remained inside Port City throughout. Police had been searching for six people at the end of July, three of them traced abroad with Interpol assistance; no outlet has reported whether those three have been located.
