A T-56 assault rifle, a repeater gun and a pistol have been recovered from a concealed underground cache at a cemetery in Hanwella, the Central Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB) said.
Police said the weapons were found on information obtained while questioning alleged organised crime figure Lalitha Kannangara, alias “Bus Lalith,” who was deported from Dubai to Sri Lanka, Ada Derana reported.
NewsFirst reported that officers also recovered four rounds of ammunition believed to be for the repeater firearm — a detail Ada Derana did not carry. It described the find as the result of a search operation mounted after Kannangara’s interrogation.
Kannangara is being held under detention orders for extended questioning, Hiru News reported. The CCIB said investigations are continuing into the cache and its links to organised criminal activity, and NewsFirst said investigators are working to establish what the weapons were being kept for and whether they were used in any offence.
Who Bus Lalith is
Kannangara was flown back from Dubai on 25 August and handed to the CCIB on arrival. Police have said he is wanted in connection with offences reported across several police divisions, including murder, attempted murder, assault, extortion, arson and firearms offences.
His return followed a deportation process pursued alongside that of “Wanathe Chathu”, part of a run of repatriations of Sri Lankan crime figures located in the UAE.
An established pattern
Recovering buried firearms on a detainee’s information is a routine outcome of these interrogations, and cemeteries recur as hiding places — ground that is dug regularly and rarely searched.
The find also lands in a fortnight already thick with weapons recoveries. Police have reported a T-56 rifle at Mahakanadarawa, Mihintale, ammunition hidden in a well at Palaly, Jaffna, and 35 bullets dumped with rubbish at Kiribathgoda. Nothing in the current reporting connects any of those finds to Kannangara.
What the three accounts agree on — and where they differ
Ada Derana, NewsFirst and Hiru News agree on the weapons recovered, the location, the unit involved and the source of the information. They differ on what the unit is called: Ada Derana’s “Central Crime Investigation Bureau” is the form used across this site’s earlier coverage, while Hiru rendered it “Colombo Crime Investigation Bureau” and NewsFirst “Colombo Central Crimes Investigation Bureau.” All three are describing the same CCIB officers.
Not reported
None of the three reports gives the date of the recovery, names the cemetery, says how long the weapons had been buried, or states whether the firearms have been sent for ballistic comparison against unsolved shootings. None says whether anyone has been arrested over the cache, nor how far into his detention Kannangara gave the information.
