A 46-year-old man known as “Bhootha Kaluwa,” the brother-in-law of alleged organised crime figure “Kos Malli,” has been hacked to death at his home in Dehiwala in the early hours of Monday, police said.
The attack took place at about 1.45 a.m. at the victim’s residence in Oban Place, Ada Derana reported. Four men arrived at the house in a three-wheeler, broke down the door, and attacked the victim with sharp weapons as he slept in bed before fleeing.
He was taken to Kalubowila Teaching Hospital, where he died of his injuries.
Police said the man had spent several years in Dubai with “Kos Malli” and had returned to Sri Lanka a few weeks ago after suffering a stroke. Investigators suspect the killing was carried out by a faction linked to organised crime figure “Badowita Asanka.”
The same street, nine days apart
Oban Place was the scene of a killing on 29 August, when a man was doused with petrol and set alight. When police arrested the main suspect in that case on 5 September, they described him as a close associate of “Kos Malli” and said the man he killed was a close associate of “Badowita Asanka.”
Monday’s killing reverses those roles on the same street: the victim is a relative of “Kos Malli,” and police suspect the “Badowita Asanka” side. Neither Ada Derana’s report nor police have publicly linked the two attacks, and the connection here rests on the affiliations police themselves gave in each case.
The suspect arrested last week told police his own motive was revenge for his father’s killing about two years earlier.
A recurring set of names
The two networks recur across this year’s violence in the southern Colombo suburbs. Police assigned four special teams in August to a run of shootings across Mount Lavinia, Dehiwala and Ratmalana attributed to rivalry between organised crime groups, and an associate of the “Badowita Asanka” network was arrested in August with “Ice”.
Police put the national count at 34 underworld-linked shootings so far this year, with 17 dead and 18 wounded — a tally that counts shootings, and so would not include a killing carried out with sharp weapons.
Not reported
Ada Derana does not give the victim’s real name, say whether anyone has been arrested, or state whether the three-wheeler has been traced. It does not say what “Kos Malli” is alleged to have done in Dubai or whether he remains there. Ada Derana renders the street as “Orban Place”; earlier reporting on the same road, including its own, uses Oban Place.
Update, September 7: Hiru names a suspect
Hiru News reported later on Monday that police believe the attack was carried out by an organised crime figure named Kavindu Dhananjaya, alias “Sando.” It independently confirms the detail that four men arrived in a three-wheeler and attacked the victim inside his home, and says Dehiwala Police are continuing investigations.
This is not the same attribution Ada Derana gave. Ada Derana said investigators suspected a faction linked to “Badowita Asanka”; Hiru names an individual. The two accounts are not necessarily in conflict — a named man could belong to the faction police suspect — but neither outlet says so, and no police statement reconciling them has been reported. We are recording both rather than merging them.
Two further discrepancies are worth noting. Hiru places the attack in the afternoon of September 7, where Ada Derana put it at 1.45 a.m. that day; the archive’s earlier reporting on this street supports the early-morning account, but neither outlet acknowledges the other. And Hiru renders the street as “Auburn Place” — a third spelling, alongside Ada Derana’s “Orban Place” and the “Oban Place” used in earlier reporting.
”Sando” has appeared on this street before
The name Hiru gives is not new to this run of violence, and the connection is one no outlet has drawn.
In July, gunmen on a scooter shot and wounded a man inside the Nisala Sevana public cemetery in Mount Lavinia. Police identified the victim as the father of an alleged organised-crime figure known as “Sando” — and recorded his address as Oban Place, Dehiwala: the same street on which “Kos Malli’s” brother-in-law has now been killed, and on which a man was doused with petrol and set alight on 29 August.
That makes Oban Place the address of the suspect’s father in one case and the scene of three attacks in seven weeks. The man alleged to have carried out the July cemetery shooting — a 44-year-old former Special Forces soldier, released on bail six days before it — was arrested in Mihintale on 2 August.
No outlet reports whether police are treating Monday’s killing as connected to the attack on “Sando’s” father, and the link here rests on the addresses and affiliations police themselves gave in each case rather than on any statement joining them.
Hiru does not name the victim either, and does not say whether “Sando” has been arrested or traced.
Update (September 16): four arrested, and the victim is named
The Mount Lavinia Division Crimes Investigation Bureau has arrested four suspects over the killing, Hiru News reported nine days after the attack.
The report answers the question left open above: the victim is named for the first time as Damith Prasad Fonseka. Neither of the September 7 reports gave his real name.
Police recovered from the suspects more than 21 grams of narcotics, four swords, a sharp weapon fashioned from a bicycle chain guard, and four mobile phones.
How the case was made
The bureau’s account describes a conventional trail rather than an informant.
Investigators first identified a suspect from CCTV footage. Questioning that man established that four people had taken part in the killing. Further inquiries found that the three-wheeler used in the attack had been rented from a man in Koralawella for Rs. 50,000 and fitted with a false number plate. Police have separately arrested a Telawala resident alleged to have driven it.
The three-wheeler itself has not been recovered, and police are looking for two more individuals linked to the killing — so the four arrested are not, on the police account, the full group.
Hiru’s account of the attack matches the original reporting on every point: four masked men, a three-wheeler, sharp weapons, the door broken down, the victim struck while asleep in bed, at about 1.45 a.m. on the 7th. That is the early-morning timing Ada Derana gave, and it settles the discrepancy with Hiru’s own September 7 report, which had placed the attack in the afternoon. It also repeats that Fonseka had spent several years in Dubai with “Kos Malli” and had returned weeks earlier after a stroke.
Neither suspect theory is confirmed or withdrawn
The report does not say whether any of the four arrested is Kavindu Dhananjaya, alias “Sando,” the man Hiru itself named on September 7, and it does not mention the “Badowita Asanka” faction that Ada Derana said investigators suspected. It gives no names for any of the four, and no motive.
So the two competing attributions recorded above remain exactly where they were: neither borne out nor abandoned by the arrests. No outlet has revisited them.
A fourth spelling of the street
Hiru renders the address “Auban Place” in this report — a fourth spelling of the same road, alongside Ada Derana’s “Orban Place”, Hiru’s own earlier “Auburn Place” and the “Oban Place” used in the archive’s earlier reporting on the street.
Ada Derana also filed on the arrests, under the headline “Four arrested over killing of ‘Kos Malli’s’ brother-in-law”, but its site was unreachable behind a CloudFront block and its publication date could not be verified, so it is not cited here.
