35 bullets have been found in a garbage dump in the Sathipola area of Kiribathgoda, NewsFirst reported.
The rounds were discovered by a group clearing rubbish at the site. Police said the bullets appear to be old.
Further investigation has been passed to the Special Task Force.
The second find of the day
Sunday produced two separate ammunition discoveries, several hundred kilometres apart and in very different circumstances. Police in Jaffna recovered more than 2,000 rounds from an abandoned well at Anthonypuram in Palaly, a cache attributed to the wartime period.
The two are not connected. The Jaffna find was a deliberate concealment in the former conflict zone; the Kiribathgoda rounds turned up in municipal waste in a Colombo suburb, in the Gampaha District, where no comparable wartime explanation applies.
Small quantities of loose ammunition surface regularly in the western suburbs. Police recovered a revolver and rounds at Mattakkuliya in August, and ammunition was found during a dengue inspection at Battaramulla in July — that case, like this one, a discovery made by people doing routine clearance work rather than by a police search.
Referral to the Special Task Force, rather than leaving the matter with the local station, is the detail worth noting: the STF handles organised crime and firearms work, which suggests police are treating the origin of the rounds as a live question rather than a disposal problem.
Not reported
NewsFirst did not give the calibre or type of the ammunition, say whether the rounds were live, or explain what “appear to be old” is based on. It did not say when the discovery was made, who was clearing the site, whether the dump is a municipal facility, or whether anyone has been arrested or questioned.
No police officer was quoted by name, no theory of how the rounds reached the dump was offered, and no link to any firearm or earlier offence was reported. The account rests on a single newsroom: Ada Derana, the Daily Mirror and Hiru News had not carried it at the time of writing.
